I mean, semicolons are important.

Toodee and Topdee starts with a really fascinating premise: mashing up side-scrolling and top-down paradigms. Switch between a Mario-style character who can jump between platforms, and a Link-style character who can move those platforms. Toodee's initial levels feel like a call-out to games like Fez or Super Paper Mario -- "perspective changes are old news."

Unfortunately, the puzzle mechanics built on top of that premise are mostly underwhelming. The first time I jumped in sidescroller mode, then switched to top-down and placed a box under myself, was cool; but doing this move three or more times in a row just to cross a gap is kinda lame. As is switching back and forth to control gravity with precise timing (aligning falling sidescroller blocks with top-down pits). And there are some counter-intuitive assumptions in mechanics like keys, which apparently still count even if an enemy picks them up.

The controls also don't work as well as they should for a platform-puzzler. Like, sometimes horizontal movement stops working mid-jump. I think the game engine loses some inputs when multiple buttons are held down? -- whatever the reason, it's a bad problem to have.

As for story, I like that the game has one, but it's a little groan-inducing. Toodee's opening establishes a motif of its divine creator as a programmer, creating varied worlds, tasking an entity named Toodoo with tracking glitches, and making these worlds revolve around ... a semicolon. Like, a literal, giant floating semicolon is what separates worlds and keeps glitches in-check. I "get" the joke but it's pretty lame.

But I digress. What made me stop playing the demo wasn't its story, but its uncreative and sometimes incongruous mechanics. I'm not completely writing off Toodee yet, but it'll need quite a bit more puzzle-design polish before I'm interested in playing it again.

Progress: Finished a few levels in the demo.