You’ve got to feel bad for game developers who come up with a great concept for a game, only to have a similar looking, but much more high profile game launch just before they do. Show any Xbox gamer the trailer to Aaru’s Awakening and they will likely respond with ‘that just looks like a rip-off of Ori and the Blind Forest’. Well it might look like that from the outside, but once you delve into the mechanics of Aaru, you realise it’s just not the case, for better and worse.

Aaru’s Awakening is a twin-stick platformer of all things, where you guide the intrepid Aaru through a series of increasingly difficult platforming puzzles through the use of jumping, air dashing and teleporting. Your movement is controlled with the left stick and the right stick is used to aim your teleport blob thingy. Fire the teleport blob with the right trigger, hit the right trigger to teleport to its current location.

The control system feel very confusing and unintuitive at first, but once you get used to it you start to appreciate the design decisions here. Jump is bound to the left trigger, rather than the more traditional A button and this will throw you for a loop at first, but the placement of the jump button means you never have to move your hand away from the right stick to jump, which is integral in later puzzles which have you chaining jumping and teleporting together.

Visually, Aaru’s Awakening is striking, reminiscent of some of the old 90’s platformers such as Abe’s Oddysee with its bizarre, alternate reality look and beautiful pre-rendered backgrounds. Everything about the world, from the way it looks to the way its inhabitants move just feels alien, almost unnatural.

Aaru, the titular protagonist is the champion of Dawn, one of the four brothers who rule over the world of Lumenox. Dawn commands Aaru to venture through the lands of Day, Dusk and Night in order to stop Night’s plot to upset the balance of the world. Each of the four worlds consists of four levels and then a boss fight against its ruler. The levels themselves are relatively short but enjoyable, providing you with increasingly difficult challenges but not outstaying their welcome. The punishing nature of the gameplay means you’ll be thankful for the respite that the end of the level brings you. The boss fights against Dawn’s brothers are an entertaining diversion from the standard levels, testing your quick thinking and mastery of the skills you have learned throughout the game.

As you progress through the worlds and defeat the bosses, the difficulty ramps up along a consistent curve, right up until the final world whereupon the game kicks you in the nuts, steals your wallet and sets you on fire. Seriously, be prepared for a whooping of spectacular proportions when you reach the final stages. The difficulty itself isn’t the problem, but rather the flow-breaking clunk with which it ramps up in this final stage, which can easily remove your drive to push through the final levels.

The difficulty comes in the form of making multiple quick manoeuvres in a row, with the game requiring you to chain more and more moves together in sequence as you progress. The problem is that the human brain, or at least my poor human brain, can really only chain so many quick decisions together before it just gives up and crashes. Beyond this point, you hit a wall and your ability to react to the challenges fails you. At this point you must just learn the course by trial and error, which ruins the otherwise flawless pacing of the earlier sections.

The controls also begin to show signs of stress in the game’s final sections. The twin-stick aiming of the teleport blob doesn’t quite have the finesse you require from it in the final stages, where you’re required to make precise shots in mid-air with very little time to aim the fiddly thing.

Aaru’s Awakening is a stunningly beautiful and unique platformer, providing surreal worlds for you to visit in bite-sized chunks as your progress through its four worlds. Sadly the difficulty spike in the final region ruins the game’s otherwise stellar pacing. Its major downfall though is its price point of £11.99, leaving it sitting on the wrong side of a tenner for my money, especially when it brings itself into the firing line of New ‘n’ Tasty and Ori and the Blind Forest.