Developers have been trying to crack the platformer nut on mobile touchscreens for years now. There are plenty of fantastic platformers that go the traditional route with virtual buttons and for many people that works just fine. Some people just can’t get on with virtual controls though, and so we’ve also seen plenty of great platformers that utilize one or two button controls but with a character that auto-runs. That’s fine too, and is certainly more accessible, but you lose a lot of the pizazz of a platforming game that has full movement. Recently, two developers are trying to have their cake and eat it too. Digital Melody is bringing out a unique one-touch platformer with full movement called Runventure next week, and solo indie developer Bony Yousuf is trying his hand at it with a game called Almost There. Check out the trailer.

As you can see in the trailer, Almost There crams a lot of functionality into that one-thumb swipe bar control setup. You can jump, long jump, wall jump, wall slide, and move left or right all using that simple control scheme. It’s a pretty cool idea on paper and I’m very curious to see how well it actually works in practice. Compared to the aforementioned Runventure, Almost There looks much more hardcore along the lines of something like Super Meat Boy, which is hard to imagine working well with just one thumb controls. I’d be happy to be proven wrong though! If you’re interested in trying this one out yourself, Yousuf is looking for beta testers in our forums so swing on by and check out the info you need to sign up for testing. Almost There is shooting for release sometime around May so look for it in the coming months.