A boy and a girl dream of a peaceful fantasy world in where they visit the mystical but friendly flying-creature they call Buddy. The hook is they cannot stop moving forward in the picturebook-like beautiful forest. Your goal is to play as one of the kids and get as far as possible within your 2 minute time-limit. Then the alarm clock rings to wake you up, your highscores will be saved, and you can start again.

Buddy greets you through the window and as you leave your bed you start running automatically. You leave your bedroom and enter the magical forest with Buddy watching you as he flies alongside. You only need the A button to jump. Press it a second time for a double-jump and a third time to glide down. As the screen scrolls by you jump on wooden platforms through the trees, use trampoline mushrooms, and collect different items along your way to get a better score and to extend your time limit. There are hundereds and thousands of stars on your way. Those have two functions: They fill the Buddy-meter, and once it's full Buddy comes and picks you up for a flight through the sky. This is a bonus stage that stops your timer and can get you all kinds of stuff. In these scenes you only have to press up/down on the controller to move Buddy. Also, stars can be used to buy things from the Extra-menu. There are 3 upgrade items that you can also find throughout your runs: +10 seconds, speed up, and x2 stars. Unlock the other 3 seasons, a bunch of costumes for both characters, and concept art. It's also where you can view your highscores and change characters. The hand-drawn characters and backgrounds look great, everything is nicely designed to keep the illusion of the dream intact.


The funny-looking Buddy often comes to help with its belly as a jumping pad or its tail as a vine to swing with. What can prevent you from a getting a good score is when you miss a platform and fall. A bunch of flying bunnies will come to save you and carry you over to the next platform, but they do it slowly, costing you time as a penalty and also emptying the Buddy-meter. Those bunnies have a second role as well and you can find them flying around. They will travel along with you as you touch them. Each of them gives you +5 seconds bonus time at the end of an area  and lots of points!


The stages are endless and different everytime. As for the difficutly, sometimes you are lucky in getting many good items and multiple easy jumping sections, and sometimes it gets pretty challenging. The random nature of Buddy & Me's level design makes it very replayable.

It's a quick pick-up&play style game that can be played for a few rounds now and then with or without friends and family. The 4 different seasons and unlockables also bring some variety and longevity. It's a shame then that the different seasons all have the same 2 music tracks.  We would have wished for more variety there as well as the the soundtrack is pretty good until you realise that it never changes.


Now on to the issue we had with the game, though it's not a super-big one, it's noticable and might be a problem for some: the game has a stuttering framerate. This is sometimes influencing your button presses, say if you hold the button too long it can be registered as two button presses, plus it can cut out graphics/animations. Even the music and sound is influenced sometimes and crackles for a moment.

Buddy & Me is a charming, party&family-friendly, easy-to-learn, fun-to-play, randomly-generated endless runner with a fair but-not-overwhelming amount of content. It's alright for the price. The downside is that the gameplay doesn't run very smooth. More of this great music would've also been nice.


Written by SKTTR, 30th July 2016