This is the twenty-first entry in the Scratching That Itch series, wherein I randomly select and write about one of the 1704 1741 games and game-related things included in the itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality. The Bundle raised $8,175,279.81 split evenly between the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and Community Bail Fund, but don’t worry if you missed it. There are plenty of ways you can help support the vital cause of racial justice; try here for a start. Lastly, as always, you may click on images to view larger versions.

The next random selection from the itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality was supposed to be Blitz Breaker, by Boncho Games, with a tagline in the bundle that reads:

A fast paced platformer without…running?

But I guess that tagline is literal, because I can’t get the game to run! I get the error pictured above. Some internet searching suggests that a very small number of players experienced a similar (but not identical) issue, but I couldn’t find a solution anywhere, and my attempts to contact the developer were unsuccessful. It’s a shame, since the game actually sounds really cool: it’s a riff on the super-hard platformer genre, but the player character must navigate without traditional movement. They can only jump straight up, and perform an airborne dash in one of the four cardinal directions. Bumping into a non-deadly obstacle during a dash bounces the character back slightly and recharges the dash, allowing for sequences of dashes through dangerous levels. It sounds really clever, most players seem to like it a lot, and it has some impressively good chiptune music by Fat Bard. I’d love to give it a try, but I don’t know what else to try to get it to start. If anyone has any suggestions, I’ll happily try them and return to Blitz Breaker later. For now, however, I must move on, because there sure are a lot of other games left in this bundle.

So that’s a regretful 21 down, and 1683 1720 left to go.