Last Year's Model

Last Year's Model inverts the usual platformer contract: you don't navigate someone else's gauntlet, you construct it piece by piece, then survive what you've built. The release date for Last Year's Model is July 13, 2026 on PC.

The core mechanic is a finite budget of components—spring blocks, portals, pneumatic tubes, traps—deployed across each level to create a path forward. The crucial pressure is that every piece you place is a piece you cannot use later. Early levels may tempt you to waste elegant solutions on simple problems. By the midpoint of a run, when the genuinely vicious obstacles arrive and your options dwindle, those choices become regrets. This creates a decision tree that extends beyond the moment you hit play: the architecture itself becomes a strategic puzzle, and failure often traces back not to bad platforming but to bad foresight.

Building Under Pressure

The timer transforms this from a puzzle into a survival test. You have unlimited attempts at any level, but your session time is not. That shift matters. It means you cannot afford to exhaustively test every possible configuration. You must build, commit, run, adapt, and move forward before analysis paralysis sets in. Faster runners can chase speedrun times; methodical builders can study the geometry; players after pure difficulty can unlock harder variants and self-impose the Lockdown challenge tier. The framework accommodates all three paths, which suggests Mawberry Games built for genuine replayability rather than a single optimal strategy.

The honest question is whether the resource scarcity and timer create enough friction to stay tense across a full run, or whether the difficulty curve flattens once players internalize the cost-benefit of each component. That hinge—whether tension persists or becomes routine—will define whether this feels like a compact, brilliant puzzle or a novelty that outstays its welcome.

Last Year's Model is built for players who want platforming to demand forward planning as much as reflex, and for anyone after a compact action game that respects their time. Platformer purists chasing pixel-perfect momentum will find less to hold onto; this game prioritizes puzzle-solving over mechanical mastery. If you value creativity and constraint over raw execution, add it to your wishlist now.