Him & Her was a title I went into with absolutely zero expectation, an indie game from QUByte, Him & Her is a strange little platformer than hooked me for longer than I ever expected. You take the role of a young man desperately trying to reach his…girlfriend I guess? On the other side of a small platforming section, simple enough right? There isn’t much real challenge to be gleaned here from each level, your objective is simple and reaching your girlfriend and you must achieve this very goal 68 times across the various levels. What sets this title apart from the rest is its gravity defying, so you have to find your way round not only horizontally but vertically too! Up walls and right over cliffs, your little stick man must run all over the shop to find his way to his lady love and its actually fairly addictive! The opening of the game has a refreshingly minimalist tutorial, so you don’t have much information thrown at you right at the start, you drop in, learn how to jump and interact, and away you go! Romance awaits!
A lot of the charm for Him & Her is thanks to its art style, it’s a very adorably drawn game with some strong vibes of the stuff your emo crush was drawing in her maths book when you were 14. Greyscale and dark, the only light comes from our leading man and the hearts he shares with his partner. Everything else is bleak, sad and dark waiting to murder you for slipping up even once!
The gravity defying part of the gameplay does an excellent job of messing with your perception, what was up is now down and what was right ahead of you is now behind, this is a satisfying way to run things, but It can definitely lead to some issues. I for one kept feeling a little bit ill during times where I had to flip the map a few times in quick succession.
Honestly I would love to be able to say more but there just isn’t very much there, the gameplay is fun and the art style intriguing, the controls can be a little bit sluggish at times but overall Him & Her is a pretty tight experience and as much fun as you would want or expect from a game that set you back £1. Though honestly, after a few levels you may start to realise that this is a game you likely played way back when you were in secondary school and you were meant to be doing IT work and instead were trawling the flash games sites. It’s everything you remember about Myspace in 2007. It’s a look of moody emo style, with absolutely nothing underneath, just like the emo kids you remember…
I’m giving Him & Her a score of 6/10