As a glassy-eyed 30-year-old man old enough to remember the way an N64 cartridge smelled when you blew the dust out of it, I’m always at least a little interested when the indie scene goes full-tilt into itching my nostalgia. Sometimes it works out – what with your DUSKs and Pizza Towers, but rarely does the feat materialize with regard to the 3D platformer. Retro shooters are so universally easy to emulate that their Renaissance has spawned an entirely new genre of indie titles, but jumping around a 3D space isn’t just hard to make fun, it’s hard to innovate on very much.
With 3D platformers, and 3D collectathon platformers, specifically, the results of indie studios are usually met with a more tepid response than their boomer shooter or 2D counterparts. A Hat In Time was a sort of breakthrough, but since then? I mean, there are good games to be sure. Great ones even. The problem is 3D collectathons are so niche and so specific to their era, with a lifespan of only two or three years, that nailing the atmosphere and innovating on the genre is no easy feat. But this new weird, wonderful game, Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom, is kind of doing both.
