Sideway New York is a basic platformer with a hip-hop theme. Its gimmick is that you're a piece of living graffiti painted onto a building, which is visually cool but only occasionally affects gameplay. One way it's used is that the direction of gravity on the surface of a roof is decided by the direction the player entered the roof. This property could have been used to create some clever puzzles or mazes, but it never was.

The player starts the game with limited movement abilities, which makes the first few levels boring. Judging from the Steam achievements, about 40% of players got bored and quit between the first level and the first boss. Things pick up later on as the game introduces some standard abilities like double-jump, gliding, and swinging from grapple points, which allowed the designers to create more interesting and challenging platforming.

A hip-hop soundtrack is provided by Mr. Lif, courtesy of Skullcandy. (Skullcandy branding is all over this game, making it feel like an advergame.) The few tracks included quickly got repetitive, leading me to turn it off entirely in favor of my own collection.

Much of Sideway feels off. Hitboxes seem to extend beyond their sprites. Jumping from a swing isn't based on momentum, instead giving a fixed vertical boost. Combat is simple button-mashing, and the game would be improved by its removal.

Sideway is a short game, and I doubt the promised sequel will ever exist. So while it's not fun, at least there's not much of it.

Everything is nice in this game, and the 2D-sliding-on-the-walls gameplay in a 3D environment is quite smart but... it's boring. It lacks the right feelings.

Probably the most uninspired level design ever.

Very Interesting Game... Quite Fun!

what is this and why does it exist

Great inovative platformer.

Visual is nice and creative, but after some minutes, you get used to it and find out that the gameplay is nothing more than a simple platform game that has nothing really new. It actually gets very boring as you progress. NOT recommended unless you're addicted to platform games.