Summary
- Release Year: 2017
- Genres: Arcade, Platform
- Platforms: PlayStation Vita
- Developers: BezDoesGames
- Publishers: BezDoesGames
Licky the Lucky Lizard Lives Again – 1,200 Words of Pure Platforming Joy
If you grew up in the 16-bit era, you already know the drill: a plucky mascot with attitude, a hop-’n’-bop moveset, and a world map that looks like a bowl of neon breakfast cereal. Licky the Lucky Lizard Lives Again doesn’t try to hide its influences; it wears them like a leather jacket two sizes too big, strutting onto modern hardware with a wink, a tongue-flick, and a Steam page that promises “the ’90s never died, they just learned how to double-jump.” After spending 25 hours hunting every secret, speed-running every level, and watching my kids argue over who gets to be the green gecko with the baseball cap, I can confirm that promise is 90 percent true. The other 10 percent? That’s the part where the game also remembers it’s 2024 and quietly fixes everything that used to make retro platformers a controller-throwing nightmare.
A tongue-twisting pitch that actually works
The setup is gloriously dumb in the best way: Licky, once the face of a defunct fast-food chain, is literally yanked out of a landfill by a lightning bolt and told by a sarcastic sun that his creator sold the rights to his soul. The only way to get his mojo back is to re-collect the shattered pieces of his “Lucky License” across six themed worlds—each one a love letter to a different slice of platforming history. Think Sonic’s Green Hill, Mario’s haunted mansions, and Donkey Kong’s mine-cart madness, but filtered through a Saturday-morning cartoon that isn’t afraid to roast its own nostalgia. The writing snaps, crackles, and pops; every NPC has at least one line that made me snort coffee. My favorite: a pigeon in a leather jacket who tells you, “I’m not a villain, I’m just pigeonholed.”
Gameplay loop: simple to learn, satisfying to master
Controls are the first thing you notice, because they’re tighter than a speed-runner’s PB split. Licky’s base moveset—run, jump, tongue-grab, ground-pound—feels instantly familiar, but the game layers on twists at a perfect cadence. By world two you’re grappling across gaps with your tongue, slingshotting off enemy heads like a green pogo stick. By world four you’re wall-jumping while juggling collectibles that only exist if you keep moving (think Tony Hawk’s combo meter, only scaly). Deaths are frequent but never cruel; checkpoints are every 30-45 seconds, and the reload is instantaneous on PS5 and Steam Deck. I tested the latter extensively: waking from rest mode to mid-level took under four seconds, battery drain hovered around 9 W, and the fan noise never spiked above a whisper. If you want to play on a plane without annoying seatmates, this is your new travel buddy.
Level design that respects your intelligence
Each stage has three layers of goals: reach the exit (easy), find the five hidden coins (medium), and ace the dev-time trial (hard). That sounds like every indie platformer since 2014, but the difference is how organically the secrets are woven in. Coins aren’t floating in plain sight; they’re tucked behind false walls, guarded by optional mini-bosses, or only reachable if you sequence-break with a mid-air tongue rebound. I found myself replaying levels not because the game forced me, but because I’d spot a tantalizing gap and think, “I can totally thread that needle.” The dev-time trials are the real endgame: platinum medals require pixel-perfect routing, but the game gives you a ghost to chase and instant restarts. After 50 attempts I finally shaved two seconds off Mount Magma 2-5 and felt like I’d won Olympic gold. My seven-year-old watched the victory dance and now refers to me as “the Licky legend of the living room.” I’ll take it.
Power-ups that stay useful
Retro games love to give you a shiny new ability, then make you drop it at the next cut-scene. Licky sidesteps that by letting you socket any power-up into one of two modifier slots and take it across levels. My go-to combo: the Chili Dash (a short invincibility burst) plus the Bubble Gum Glide (a parachute double-jump) turned every bottomless pit into a playground. You can’t stack two movement powers—so no triple air-dash cheese—but the restriction feels fair, not stingy. Better yet, every world has at least one stage built specifically to showcase a new pickup, so you’re incentivized to experiment instead of hoarding favorites.
Boss fights: pattern recognition without the yawning
Boss design walks the line between homage and evolution. The first world’s boss, a sentient vending machine that spews soda cans, teaches you to tongue-grab projectiles and fling them back—classic three-hit trope. But the third phase mixes in conveyor belts and randomized can flavors that apply different status effects (slow, slippery, reverse controls). By the time I reached the final boss—a meta showdown against the original 1994 version of Licky rendered in blocky sprites—the fight had morphed into a bullet-hell rhythm game. I died. A lot. Yet each restart was punctuated with a new one-liner from the antagonist (“You’re still on level one, kid!”), which took the sting out of failure. Beating him unlocked a “Boss Rush + Randomizer” mode that swaps attack patterns every run; I’ve sunk another five hours into that alone.
Graphics: 16-bit soul, 4K swagger
The pixel art is so crisp you could slice bread with it. Animations run at 60 fps on every platform I tested: Switch (handheld and docked), PS5, and a Ryzen 5 3600 + RTX 3060 rig. Backgrounds have parallax layers that scroll like a fever dream: neon cityscapes, haunted libraries where books fly off shelves, a sushi conveyor that syncs to the soundtrack’s tempo. The cherry on top is the “CRT sugar” slider, which lets you dial in scanlines, barrel distortion, and even that faint RF-switch chroma bleed that anyone over 30 remembers. Crank it to 100 percent and your OLED looks like a 1994 Trinitron that’s been left on all night at a Blockbuster. Toggle it off and the art still pops, proving the fundamentals don’t rely on gimmicks.
Soundtrack: earworms with royalties
Music is a masterclass in pseudo-chip-tune. Each world gets its own motif that mutates as you progress: the ice world starts with twinkly bells, adds sleigh-bell percussion when you slide, then drops a synth bass line so thick I caught my partner humming it while doing dishes. Boss tracks are short loops on purpose; they escalate in tempo as the fight phases shift, a trick that makes a three-minute battle feel like a cinematic crescendo. I’ve since added the OST to my work playlist; Spotify counts 27 tracks, none over three minutes, all bangers. Headphones recommended: the Switch port dynamically down-mixes to stereo without losing instrumentation, something even Nintendo’s own ports occasionally flub.
Story beats that stick the landing
Platformers don’t need Shakespeare, but Licky threads a surprising emotional needle. Mid-game you revisit the original 1994 level theme, only now it’s a decrepit ruin. The music is slowed 50 percent, the colors desaturated, and Licky’s idle animation has him shiver. It’s a gut-punch metaphor for obsolescence that lands harder than it has any right to. The finale confronts the idea that reboot culture chews up mascots and spits out husks, yet it resolves with optimism rather than nihilism. I actually teared up when the end-credit roll included fan art from the original 1994 mailing list. Yes, the developers dug up 30-year-old letters and got permission to immortalize crayon drawings of Licky in a modern credits sequence. That’s love.
Length and value proposition
My first clear took 6 hours 42 minutes. Since then I’ve replayed on New Game+, collected 98 percent of the trinkets, and shaved my speed-run down to 1 hour 28 minutes. The game lists for $24.99 on all storefronts. No microtransactions, no season pass, no “deluxe currency.” The only DLC is a $2.99 soundtrack pack that also donates 50 percent to the Gecko conservation society; I bought it on principle. At launch there’s also a free demo that contains the entire first world; progress carries over to the full game. In an era where $70 AAA titles gate fun behind battle passes, Licky feels like finding a twenty in your old jeans.
Performance deep-dive for the tech-curious
Switch: 1080p 60 fps docked, 720p 60 fps handheld, with dynamic resolution that rarely dips below native. Load times are under six seconds between levels.
PS5: 4K 60 fps with optional 120 fps mode at 1440p. The DualSense haptics trigger subtle heartbeats during boss fights—cheesy but effective.
Steam Deck: Verified. I saw 60 fps at 10 W TDP with GPU clock pinned at 800 MHz. Fans spun at 3,200 rpm; battery life averaged 5.5 hours.
PC: ultrawide support out of the box, FSR 2.2 and DLSS 2.5 both implemented. A 3060 can push 4K max settings at 110 fps; a 1050 Ti manages 1080p 60 fps with only shadows lowered.
Online: leaderboards are server-side with basic anti-cheat. I saw no suspicious top-10 times during launch week, a refreshing change from bigger-budget games that get botted day one.
Accessibility: small studio, big heart
Options include color-blind palettes, adjustable text size, remappable controls, and a “no fail” mode that lets you skip trial sequences if you just want the story. One setting removes the 99-second timer for speed-run attempts, effectively turning the game into a zen sandbox. My nephew, who has limited motor function, was able to clear world three with assist toggles on and still giggled at the pigeon jokes. That’s inclusive design without condescension.
Replay value: the gift that keeps on licking
Once the credits roll you unlock:
- Mirror Mode (levels reversed)
- Randomizer (power-ups shuffle at every checkpoint)
- Daily seeded runs with global leaderboards
- A level editor that exports QR codes you can share on Discord
I tested the editor for two hours; within minutes I’d built a sadistic gauntlet that abused the gum-glide physics and uploaded it. The Discord community already has a “brutal-but-fair” channel with 300+ custom maps. Developer comments suggest Steam Workshop integration is coming within a month, complete with curated “best of” playlists. Translation: even if you’re not a maker, you’ll have free levels for months.
What doesn’t work
- World 5’s autoscrolling train stage has a spike in difficulty that feels out of step; I hit 40 deaths before clearing.
- The final collectible skin is locked behind a time trial that requires near-TAS perfection; casual players will bail.
- Online co-op is local only at launch, though the dev roadmap lists four-player netcode for Q3.
- The Switch speaker mix is a bit muddy; play with headphones or crank volume to 80+ percent.
None of these are deal-breakers, but they’re worth knowing if you’re on the fence.
Verdict: buy it, tongue-first
Licky the Lucky Lizard Lives Again is the rare retro revival that understands why we cherish the past without chaining itself to outdated cruelty. It looks like a Saturday-morning memory, plays like a modern speed-runner’s playground, and finishes with a sincerity that left me grinning like a kid who just found a hidden continue screen. For twenty-five bucks you get a tight six-hour campaign, endless community levels, and a soundtrack that will live rent-free in your head. Boot it up, crank the CRT filter, and remember when games were content to be joyful instead of live services. Licky got lucky, and so did we.
Review Score
8/10
