Joggernauts is a wonderful game concept that unfortunately doesn’t always deliver on fun. What happens when you combine an endless runner with four players? Chaos! I must say the first hour of Joggernauts was a loud, boisterous, raucous good time. After that, it was more frustrating than fun.

If you’ve ever played a Bit Trip Runner game or any type of endless runner, you’ll know the basic gameplay involved in Joggernauts. Players start each level with their character automatically moving left-to-right through the level. In Joggernauts, there is a minimum of two characters at all times, even in single-player mode. Multiplayer can expand to up to four simultaneous players. Actions in the game boil down to jumping or changing to the front of the conga line of death (my words, not from the game’s description). Now, like I said above, initially this game was a lot of fun to play. Then, my friends and I got to Level 1-7 and our patience grew thin with the game.

We tried everything to succeed in this level and even changed the difficulty to make the game not auto-run as fast. Alas, we couldn’t get past that level during the game night so we moved on to another game. I played some more after that but it was most certainly more tedious than rewarding. When a game gets to that point, it’s unfortunate. There wasn’t much incentive to tackle the later levels to see what came next. We also experienced frame-rate issues throughout some of the levels, especially in 1-7 which led to missed jumps and other timing issues. In a game that features some unforgiving platforming, it made for a frustrating experience.

Visually the game is beautiful–it features lovely, crisp visuals that reminded me a lot of Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime. The art style and colors are quite nice. The menus and user-interface were also very well done–they even incorporate some fun humor to the loading screens which was welcome.

The multiplayer in the game could be fun but everyone in the group really has to be on their game. Quick reflexes are a must which leads to a more stressful cooperative experience like Overcooked (I would say it’s even a notch above that too). Overcooked and its sequel had an easier difficulty curve that made them more accessible. Joggernauts really doesn’t fit that bill.

I wish I had good things to report from my time with Joggernauts, but it was more sour than sweet. While it may hold some fun for the first few levels, the appeal quickly wears off. If you are in the mood for a unique, challenging runner with co-op play, Joggernauts may provide some fun for you. However, you might want to wait for a sale.