If there's one game that completely failed to find its audience, it's Pid. On the outside, Pid looks another artsy puzzle platformer, with its gentle, softly rendered backgrounds, and relaxing acoustic soundtrack. Upon playing it though, the game honestly has more in common with Super Meat Boy than any puzzle platformer. The distance between checkpoints is tiny, you have infinite lives, and enemies, traps, and spikes are everywhere. I personally love the game to death, but I can see why the huge dissonance between how the game looks and feels, vs how it plays, turned a lot of people off. It's really too bad though, because I think Pid is one of the best games around.

The main gimmick here is the ability to place down beams of light that can carry you around. The way this changes how you navigate through the game world is dramatic, and a bit reminiscent of Bionic Commando Rearmed, which some of the Pid team also worked on. The game thoroughly explores this mechanic, with every area in the game having a slight twist to how the game plays. Most of the time you use the beam to carry yourself, but other locations have you using it to carry bombs towards enemies, carry enemies themselves, or even push around light sources needed to light the way for you. The other great thing about the beam mechanic is how the solution is always right there in front of you, but you have to figure out where to place the beams, adding a bit of a puzzle aspect.

Overall though, I really can't stress enough how much I like this game. The scenery, music, atmosphere, and gameplay all combine to form this truly unique experience. The game is pretty long as well, but has a great flow and variety to the areas. If you like hard platformers, you should check this game out.

No game has frustrated me and entertainmed at the same time so much than Pid.
Underneath the beautiful aesthics (it honestly had a pixar vibe going on) and the ♥♥♥♥ing amazing sound track lies a game so god damn hard it made me want to burn my computer.
The game starts out friendly enough. You learn the basic mechanics of using the game's gravity gems to float to high unreachable platsforms. Then you are introduced to bombs, music boxes, smoke bombs, lazer beams, and so on to assist you. Then approaching the first boss there is a sudden difficulty spike. Platforms got smaller, enemies became faster, and oh god the ♥♥♥♥ing spiked walls. EVERYWHERE.
Even at the easiest difficulty setting if you don't have the patience to retry a level again again you will be ♥♥♥♥ed.
Unlike other precision platoformers like Super Meat Boy the game has a larger focus of utilizing the gravity gems/timing. For instance you'll teach yourself how to wall jump even if there isn't a wall sticking mechanic, which will help you find the collectables throughout the game.
The collectables are what almost ruined this game for me. There are 12 "souviners" and 17 "secret constellations". Finding them are almost impossible without guides and even when you reach them you will have to try. try. try and try again to get them. one of the souviners took me at least 40 mins to get. Collecting all of them doesn't give you an alternate ending or anything, but it certainly makes you feel good knowing that you challenged yourself to the MAX. Also an achievement.

BUT, the game is gorgeous. Even when i was frustrated i couldn't get over how amazing the game looked. The soundtrack is definately up there with hotline miami in terms of quality. The timing of when the tunes started playing according to where you are in the game is pitch perfect also. One moment you're hearing gusty fast paced drum, when suddenly you reach a calm zero gravity zone and a calm piano track kicks in. Perfect. These two factors kept me pushing through the more unforgiving parts of the game.
The levels also very greatly from robot sweat shops, to an opera stage with flying airplanes. ♥♥♥♥ gets creative, and you will grin ear to ear everytime a new set piece is opening.
The story is also starts out simple, and gets pretty interesting by the end. It's pretty cliche, but it's like a reallly good children's picture book.

If you like platformers that are challenging you might want to pick this up. It's pretty cheap, and it's been in like 3 bundles this year alone. While it has an extremly unforgiving diffuiculty spike, it also has alot of excellent redeeming qualities. Reccomended if you have time.

7/10
it's also the 3rd game I 100%. Why do i do this to myself.

This game reminds me a lot of old SNES games, kind of game that brings you back to childhood when many games was like this.
Colors are beautiful, every background is painted with eye pleasing color.
Levels are well designed and fun to explore. There's high probability you will not be bored to replay entire game again.
Boss battles are interesting, especially bosses themselves. They'll surely surprise you first time you see them by their weird look.
Soundtrack is awesome, it's written for this game but there're some tracks that you can easily put in your music folder for later listening.
As for the difficulty, this is hard game, it starts slow but gets really hard towards the end (you don't have to worry if you learn mechanics well).
Aside from single player campaign, there's local co-op mode for sp campaign and there're challenge levels which reminds me of Super Meat Boy kind of levels.

I think that this game as a whole is worth it. It can give you ~20 hours of playtime (if you play all modes) and more, if you decide to replay it, which is possible.

9/10 - good platform game

Amazing soundtrack and fun mechanics. 9/10
Frustrating levels and lack of guidance 6/10
overall: 7.5/10
Verdict - Don't buy this game if you didn't like Blood of the Werewolf, They Bleed Pixels, or Super Meat Boy. Cave Story is similarly hard.
It's a nice, blood-free alternative, if you're interested

the only thing I would really plug is the soundtrack for any of those games. you can find Pid to download via Amazon.com and sample it on spotify

This game starts out really easy but by level 3 it starts out as a ♥♥♥♥fest full of enemies with insane difficulty. Buy it.