Cinematic puzzle-platforming comedy LIFTED is a delightful short adventure

LIFTED is a family-friendly and quite funny cinematic platforming adventure that recently released with Native Linux support. Created by Adventure Works L.L.C., founded by Disney Imagineer Jeffrey Ashbrook. Disclosure: a key was provided to GamingOnLinux.

What's it about? In LIFTED you play as Ari, a bit of a slacker student who wants to grab some extra credit. You meet up with an eccentric Professor Raventhorpe who has created something rather extraordinary - a magical lift (the "Anytime Elevator") that can travel through time. As you can imagine, things don't exactly go according to plan, mostly because it seems the Professor doesn't exactly have a plan and just likes to push the button and you're an unwilling participant in the madness.

Turns out, your little time-warping quest is due to the Professor being in love with another teacher, and the Professor wants to pinch some ancient tiara to give to her…

The mixture of cinematic sit-back-and-relax story telling, with the 2D platforming is a fun and very fine tasting blend. You can instantly tell the Disney inspiration in this one, right from the get-go it feels like a familiar family film or mini-series. A good one for a slightly younger gaming audience, but perhaps not for people who are after something challenging. That is the great thing about the gaming industry in the same way as the film and TV industry - there's a little something for everyone.

See the release trailer below:

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LIFTED reminded me of playing some classic 2D/3D platformers back in my earlier console years, it has that same sort of careful charm to be found in some bigger names like Mario and it's just as accessible. Going through multiple time periods I got a little bit of a Back To The Future / Doctor Who vibe with story set-up in this one too.

As for the actual gameplay - you only get two difficulty settings here with Classic and Easy, with the Classic mode giving you a little bit more difficulty with the platform jumps but it won't exactly make you sweat much. The cinematic style to it is not just for the story cut-scenes but for the platforming too thanks to the mixture of the 3D viewpoint with fun backdrops blended together with 2D platforming adventuring.

That said, I'm not ashamed to admit there were a few sections that took me a good few attempts, to the point that Ari cracked a joke about an Easy mode. Rude. But fair. The puzzles did stump me a few times too actually, requiring a little bit of careful study, getting you to slow down a bit so it was a nice changing of pace from all the running, jumping and swinging.

For players who like collecting things for that extra bit of fun there's some of that here too, with certain special paths to find to collect little ornaments to unlock new clothes based on the periods visited.

If you're after an adventure that won't take forever to complete as it's only a few hours long and not exactly difficult, that features a lovely but fairly predictable story - this is a nice one to go and pick up. As long as you go in knowing it's not a challenging game but a reasonably fun story to progress though, then you'll enjoy it.

Fantastic style, backed up by some lovely voice acting. Overall, I did really enjoy my time with it. Even if the platforming mechanics as a whole felt a bit basic. A pretty feel-good adventure that's fairly funny at times that I think is worth a go.

The Linux version was played on Fedora KDE 44 where it performed well on the maximum settings.

From the press release: "LIFTED is built on the principles that I learned at Disney: there can be magic in every moment," said Jeffrey Ashbrook, Founder, Adventure Works. "From the opening cutscene to the music, down to the clever back-and-forth dialogue between Ari and Professor Raventhorpe — I wanted gameplay to feel like playing through a classic animated movie, evoking the same childlike wonder we all felt when watching our favorite childhood films."