Review | Hot Lava
Hot Lava’s official release delivers everything I was hoping it would in a way that really feels like a step up from its beta form. Subtle redesigns, player interactions and awe-inspiring new levels with a heap of collectibles have been introduced all at once, allowing fresh players to explore the charming lava wonderland that awaits them while also giving returning players an incentive to play through older levels for the umpteenth time.
I remember seeing the trailer for Hot Lava and thinking “I could get into something like this” before signing up for the beta program and quickly forgetting about it for almost two years. Fast forward to June of 2018 and before I knew it, I was neck-deep in stylised lava, adding my best times to the Hot Lava discord and chasing a godforsaken letter grade down a hallway. Smash cut even later to September 20, 2019, and Klei’s Hot Lava is now officially released for the world to see. The game has seen its fair deal of level redesigns and scattered action-figure corpses over the past couple of years, and it is safe to say all the hard work being funnelled into this addictive childhood fever dream has paid off.
This whole premise of the game revolves around your plastic toy body embodying the buck-wild mind of a small child, with this messy and inventive concept being the driving force behind the game’s designs and interactions. Supermarkets, school gymnasiums and the family basement are transformed into radical, hellish obstacle courses, and If this sounds anything like the daydreams you conjured up as a child, then you’ll feel right at home in no time.
Hot lava puts a unique spin on the parkour genre by providing its players with original representations of comical, imaginative and incredible parkour. Creative yet oddly believable course designs make it easy to predict and navigate the flow of each level, speaking volumes to how immersive they can be and just how cleverly planned these courses are. On top of this, the sheer size and depth of each world allows for multiple pathing opportunities, meaning you’re able to experiment and find the most efficient route to the goal.
Sound design in a game like this can be both straightforward and a quick mess. Finding a way to believably capture the atmosphere of a world engulfed in lava whilst squeezing in helpful auditory cues like when a collectible is nearby or when a checkpoint is reached is a daunting task. Fortunately, Klei’s sound design covers every crevasse of the game and blends so well with the game’s visual cues that I constantly focus on treading the lava wonderland in front of me rather the fact I’m doing an obstacle course in a supermarket.
All of the small details feel cohesive and fluid with their graphical counterpart: getting a speed boost as you bunny-hop, flipping collectible cards, hearing that whoosh as you pick up a frightening amount of speed in a primary school hallway--all of these important, fast paced mechanics are supported audibly, allowing you to focus on deciphering the blurring colours in front of you rather than constantly checking your H.U.D for information.
If you ever find yourself repeating the course catalogue, you can always turn your eyes towards the myriad of community created levels available on the Steam Workshop. Introduced during Hot Lava’s Early Access tenure, the workshop allows community members to create and share levels to the public, with popular levels being displayed on the main menu through Klei’s community spotlight feature. The ingenuity exuding from the workshop means you’ll always find something new to try out and risk getting hooked on.
Hot Lava really sets itself apart in the parkour genre. With so much attention to detail being poured into a concept that allows for so much creativity, the game certainly had a lot to live up to prior to launch. For the longest time, I wasn’t sure if Klei would deliver given the anticipation they had accumulated since 2016, and now, it’s clear that the game holds itself up tremendously well for what it’s worth.
Hot Lava is available on Steam and Apple Arcade.
