The Eiffel Tower is caught mid-explosion, pieces of it pulled out and hanging in the air, as if it’s all part of one of those clever diagrams that shows you how complex things are put together. Why not? The Eiffel Tower – this strange, peaceful, mangled version of it – lies at the heart of Youropa, a game I meant to play for just half an hour the other day to see what it was all about. A game that instead drew me in for many hours of delight and genuine wonder.
God, Youropa is special. The developers name-drop classics like Portal and Jet Set Radio, and I can see what they mean, just about. But I’d also add The Witness and Psychonauts and probably a dozen other games, and yet that would all be misleading anyway, because while Youropa is clearly made from cherished pieces of favourite games it’s also entirely its own thing with its own character.
Is it a platformer? Kind of, not that you spend much time jumping. Still, there are doors to open, a map to navigate from node to node, pressure plates and switches and enemies and lifts and all that platforming jazz. But it’s all tied together with a glorious conceit that is hard to describe yet incredibly easy to understand once you see it in motion: each stage is a little blockish knot of land floating in space, and while you can’t jump, you can walk up any surface that has a gentle curve to it, which means that you can walk over to a wall, walk up the wall, follow it over its own humped back and maybe round a corner, until you’re pretty much upside down but still having a wonderful time of it all.
Source: Eurogamer Youropa: Following the thread has never been more enjoyable