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Beton Brutal is challenging yet chill
Beton Brutal trailerWatch on YouTube
Beton Brutal trailer
Beton Brutal certainly gets challenging as you climb higher, and introduces some special surfaces which I assume are part of the inspiration from Minecraft parkour maps. The punishment grows too, as you can fall all the way down if you don’t get lucky and land on something close. Though unlike trolly gauntlet platformers such as AltF4 and Rage Quit, it doesn’t seem outright hostile and dickish. Not from what I’ve seen, anyway. It seems more in the vein ofGetting Over Itand fittingly, I heard of Beton Brutal throughBennet Foddy declaring “This game rules.”
This screenshot is from the Steam page because this area is still high above me
I have peeked at a few speedrun videos, out of curiosity, and oh I have a lot to learn. The game is full of little shortcuts and clever tricks to hasten your climb. Those are helpful for speeding through familiar sections after a fall, and surely vital if you get into rerunning to improve your best time (it does have global and friends leaderboards). I’ve tried to replicate one or two of the bigger skips I saw and nope, I think I need to master the fundamentals and complete the main path before I attempt the fancy stuff.
I have done plenty of trick jumps, bunny-hopping, and strafe-jumping inQuakeandHalf-Lifegames (sadly, I never got the hang ofCounter-Strike surfing), but Minecraft parkour is largely unknown to me. Quite interesting to experience something new. This has also sent me down a rabbit hole of watching Minecraft parkour maps, which are way trickier and more complex than I had imagined.
I might never reach the top of Beton Brutal. And if I do, I almost certainly will not then move into the phase of going again and again to hone my runs and cut my times. All the same, I’m enjoying my time in this terrible tower. I’m a sucker for overgrown Brutalism, it’s true, but it just has a nice feel to the place. Even the occasional trickles of dust and debris are pleasant. Nice gentle music, too. Until you gaze up or down too long and the vertgio system kicks in and things get a bit spooky. Brr.
Fans of crumbling concrete should also check out the recentBrutalist map pack for Quake. And for more giant derelict structures,hit Steam and grab the demo for Lorn’s Lure, a first-person explore-o-climber that’s one of ourmost-anticipated games of 2023. Oh, andBabbdi is a great little free gamewhich gives you all sorts of weird tools to explore a Brutalist city (thanks to reader Sam for the reminder!).
