Restart.
Your thumbs tense as the screen clears. The little orange cat pops up in the middle and you already know what’s next. The shower of saw blades is about to begin; its sole purpose to test your skills of jumping precision. Your high score might not be anything extraordinary, but you know that can’t last. This could be the run. You could finally-
CH-THUNK!
You watch your little cat avatar immediately fly off the screen as the first saw blade got it straight in the lower regions. It seems as though you misjudged the arc of that jump. Again.
Oh well. It happens.
Restart.
One-Trick Fish
Few games today could be described as doing one thing and doing it well. A Slight Chance of Sawblades, self-described as an “intense high-score chaser” is one of those games. Developed and published by solo indie game developer Yong Kian Chin, the title is the essence of a platform game in its most distilled form. There are no platforms to traverse, no enemies to defeat, and no goal to reach. There are only saw blades.
The goal is to jump over as many saw blades raining down as you can, destroying them and extending your time limit. Aim for a high score and show off your expertise on the leaderboard. At the moment of writing this, my high score is a measly 33. Can you do better?
Smells Like Retro
While there might not be too much to say about the presentation of A Slight Chance of Sawblades, I have to mention how truly retro it feels. The music and sound effects take after early arcade-style video games, at some points even resembling the crude audio of an old Atari console. The graphics remind me of classic flash games—pixel art with fluid animation. All this and more serve to emphasize the blood-pumping nature of an otherwise simple game.
I Game, I Saw, I Restarted
The gameplay of A Slight Chance of Sawblades is simple. You start an attempt, and saw blades start raining down from above. Your task is to jump over them without touching them. Touch a saw blade, and your attempt is over. You do have a double-jump, which can allow for some really acrobatic dodging as long as you make sure you don’t launch yourself into another saw blade you didn’t notice coming from above. Not that that ever happened to me of course. Just saying.
Saw blades turn green when jumped over, and are destroyed once you touch the ground afterwards, allowing for combos if you can jump over more than one at a time. Combos don’t award more points, but they do grant exponentially more yellow pellets that you can pick up to extend your time limit. Each pellet grants you one additional second on top of the sixty that you start with. As such, attempts don’t tend to take up much time.
If you can survive long enough for the timer to run out, the real challenge begins. Instead of just ending your attempt, the screen turns red and large saw blades begin raining down at a rapid pace. You can rack up some extra score very fast here, but your run is probably going to end in just a few more seconds.
A Reward Well Jumped
There are two main rewards for playing A Slight Chance of Sawblades. First, as previously mentioned, the leaderboards. Not every game can stand to have a high score system, but the simplicity of this title lends itself well to such a competition. The difficulty ramp that the game is built around can make even middling scores feel like an incredible achievement. The leaderboard can emphasize this feeling and push the player to try even harder—if you reached 20 points this time, maybe next time you can reach 25.
In addition to the competitive aspect, every time you finish an attempt you earn tickets. These tickets can be spent to unlock character skins in the main menu. It’s a little extra that the game provides as an acknowledgement of your time spent playing. Tired of the default cat? Now you can be a walking fish! Or the king of the penguins! Play enough and you’ll likely find your favorite character. Mine is Sheet Man. I’m not sure why, he just is.
Of course there is the question we always have to ask about such games: how is it monetized? A Slight Chance of Sawblades is free, so how can you support its development? The game has no cash shop—no ways to extend an attempt, no ways to unlock character skins through anything but gameplay.
Instead, every dozen attempts the game interjects “a word from our sponsor” in order to show you an advertisement and give you a much needed break from the shower of saw blades. You also have the option to contribute a tip of two to four dollars for an ad-free experience. If you like the game enough to consider shooting for the top of the leaderboard, it could be a worthwhile investment.
A Slight Chance of Sawblades is an honest game. It doesn’t claim to be things it’s not, but it does try to be the best at what it is. It’s a good enough game to pick up when you have a couple minutes you can’t spend doing anything else, but it’s also great for pushing your platforming skills to the absolute limit. While there’s no guarantee it’ll hold your attention long term, it’d be hard to argue that it wouldn’t be worth trying anyway.
