PixelJunk Eden 2 PS5 review – a very strange platform game

Q-Games returns with a 4K version of platformer PixelJunk Eden 2, that also adds co-op play to its very peculiar take on the genre.

Not only are many video game franchises now well into their 40s and beyond but many developers are also starting to rack up some very significant anniversaries. Companies like EA and Capcom date back to the early 80s, while Sega’s murky history goes back to the 60s and Nintendo is over 136 years old.

But it’s not just the household names that go back decades. Returnal developer Housemarque, who even most hardcore gamers have never heard of, turned 30 years old this year and Japanese developer Q-Games, makers of the PixelJunk series, will be 25 next year. We’re glad of that, because they’ve been worryingly quiet in recent years – although that seems to be because they were working on Dreams Of Another, which also came out this month.

We should get round to that shortly, but we wanted to give PixelJunk Eden 2 a nod because although it was released as a Switch exclusive in 2020 we’d never played it before, and this is the first time it’s been released on any other format.

There are many different PixelJunk games, starting with the self-explanatory PixelJunk Racers in 2007 and including the likes of tower defence game PixelJunk Monsters, platformer PixelJunk Eden, PixelJunk Shooter, the bluntly named PixelJunk SideScroller, and the downright peculiar PixelJunk Nom Nom Galaxy. They’re basically an excuse for Q-Games to make whatever they want and still maintain some recognisable branding, which is something we wish big publishers would do as well (Naughty Dogs Presents… or some such).

Although they’re based in Kyoto, Q-Games is lead by British creator Dylan Cuthbert, whose earliest hits include Starglider 1 and 2, and the early Star Fox games for Nintendo. Not everything they do is a success (they were also responsible for the recently re-released The Tomorrow Children) but Eden 2 is interesting because although it is technically a platformer, it has very little in common with other games in the genre.

Your avatar is a Grimp, a small creature that as well as jumping can extrude a strand of silk, letting it swing around any platform. Not that anything in the game resembles an actual platform. Each level is instead referred to as a garden, its curlicued fronds silhouetted in front of a succession of psychedelic, shifting coloured backdrops, which pulse to the ambient techno music that accompanies them.

Your Grimp’s main job in each garden is to collect pollen from the pods that float around it. Swinging yourself round and round, you smash pods, triggering the pollen within to accumulate at the nearest empty seed. Once a seed is full, you can fling your Grimp into it, causing it to grow new stalks, letting you reach previously inaccessible areas of the level. Your eventual goal is each level’s Spectra, which you’ll need to find and fill with pollen in the same way as the seeds. Once full, you collect the Spectra to complete the garden.

That’s very much like the 17-year-old original game, although Grimps now handle slightly differently, if you can remember that far back. They remain oddly wayward, though. That means as you swing, you can eject your Grimp by letting go of the silk that attaches them to a plant stem, but you can never be completely sure which direction they’ll be flung, or with how much velocity. You also often get a second jump, allowing you to change vector – but not always.

To make up for its random factors, the price of messing up jumps is low. Typically, the Spectra is high above you when you start, the game’s single screen view lazily tracking your progress. If you catapult yourself near the top, the viewpoint will slowly follow, but if you hurl your Grimp off the sides or bottom, it explodes, respawning more or less where you began your last jump.

You lose a few seconds in the process, and since each level is timed that’s an issue, but only a minor one. You have a few minutes to complete each garden, and the timer resets every time you hit a checkpoint, making the limit actually quite generous. It also saves your most recent checkpoint if you run out of time and need to try again. It gives proceedings a mellow flavour, which is in keeping with its ambient tunes and mesmerising colour schemes.

The game’s created to be mildly hypnotic, and it does feel that way on occasion. While it can’t match the synaesthetic glory of Tetris Effect, which is both trippier and far more involving as a set of mechanics, it does supply moments of flow as you jump, float, and toss your Grimp around the gardens.

Unfortunately, it also has plenty of capacity to frustrate, the unpredictability of your locomotion, combined with the limitations of its slow-moving viewpoint, meaning you’ll often fail to make jumps that in most games would be easy.

To make life simpler, you’ll earn spice on your travels, which offers a consumable buff, up to three of which you can apply at a time. They have varying effects, like extending time limits, letting you jump further, or lengthening your Grimp’s silk, letting you sweep up extra pollen as you circulate. Although none is exactly game changing, they offer just enough advantage that they’re at least useful.

You’ll also meet and unlock new Grimps, each of whom comes with their own modest skillset. These can amplify (or obviate the need) for the spices you collect and make for interesting variations in the cadence of your jumps and pollen collection. It helps defer the sense of monotony that unfortunately proves inescapable, as you make your way through gardens that don’t feature much sense of progression as you level up.

This version of PixelJunk Eden 2 comes with 4K visuals and a new soundtrack by Japanese multimedia artist Baiyon, whose work also featured in LittleBigPlanet 2. It fits the game nicely, sounding simultaneously alien and cosy, and working in harmony with the unorthodox visuals. You can also play it in two-player co-op, the single-screen view sedately tracking both tiny Grimps as they swing around.

However, despite the confident weirdness of its art style, soundtrack, and subject matter, PixelJunk Eden 2 never quite finds its feet. Whether it’s your Grimp’s motion, which doesn’t sit right even after many hours of practise, the lack of meaningful progression as you unlock new gardens, or the fact that there’s only a limited range of backgrounds to discover. It’s fun, but never quite as much fun as it looks.

Formats: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and PC
Price: £11.99
Publisher: Q-Games
Developer: Q-Games
Release Date: 10th October 2025
Age Rating: 3

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