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There is an excellent video by Jimmy McGee about why Rusted Moss is so great to which I’d struggle to add – so I won’t. Instead, I’d like to talk about the major content update that came out a couple of months ago. The main attraction is the great climb, a 200+ room marathon pushing at the edges of the game’s difficulty curve. To say it is hard would be an understatement. However, it is also surprisingly fluid. At its best points, you find yourself swinging between platforming and combat seamlessly – without falling into the worst trends of kaizo platformer design where the path through is tightly prescribed. The larger room design encourages play that is fast and improvisational.

The boss design follows a similar beat, with large tracking patterns. Both Noah & Julie and FrØy benefit immensely from warm-up phases which allow you to learn their rhythm. The interpolation of ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King’ speeding up for each of FrØy’s phases was an especially fun accompaniment. I can’t help but wonder though if an intensification of the Seer fight (the regular final boss of the base game) was the most interesting choice. All three fights settle into a circle strafing flow, with the occasional specific call and response. Faxdoc (now Emlise) was quoted as desiring to make the game “weirder” now that they have confidence as a developer. Noah & Julie went down so quickly I thought there might have been an Agni & Rudra gimmick, especially because of their colour scheme, but no. FrØy has the excuse of being the final boss of Rusted Moss and does arguably reach the limit of difficulty which the mechanics can support (looking at FrØy?’s jumpy chainsaw for something that goes too far).

FrØy’s final stage also appropriates Puck’s pre-patch fight, where you just have to focus on dodging as his healthbar automatically ticks down. Puck now embodies that weirdness Emlise spoke of, and what I really loved about the base-game boss design. There’s an extended climbing section reminiscent of a lower intensity great climb, gated by destruction of his crystal hearts, and a finale where you snapcut across comic-panel challenges. It makes the fight far more memorable, with a similar quality to Lenore, Spirella, and Freia in that it slips you out of the familiar play pattern by introducing some friction. Lenore is initially frustrating by spawning Ichor (lingering poison) in her vulnerable flee state, but it changes the way you chase her – from being right on her tail to staying a controlled distance away and predicting where she will bounce. Lenore and Spirella are both damaged by external objectives, but one requires a slow and careful weaving between her web and the other a frantic chase away. Difficulty is best when it adds texture.

Anyway, Rusted Moss is pretty cool – you should give it a go