Cloudberry Kingdom asks a simple question: how hard can a platformer get before it stops being fun? Pwnee Studios built a whole game around that question, and the answer is more interesting than the premise suggests.
Trailer, via Ubisoft.
Jordan Fisher’s Algorithm
Cloudberry Kingdom is a platform game created by Pwnee Studios. Its levels are not designed by hand. They are generated by a set of algorithms developed by Jordan Fisher, and those algorithms adapt to player skill level, player character abilities, and alteration of game physics.
That last part is the whole trick. Change the gravity, change the jump height, change what the character can do, and the generator builds a level around the new rules. It was crowdfunded via Kickstarter, and it shipped in 2013 as a downloadable title for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, Wii U and Xbox 360.
Bob, Princess, and the Orb
The story is a joke told straight. Unhappily ever after. The Orb resurfaces and the classic characters return: Kobbler with his mania, Princess with her endless boredom.
Bob, the retired hero, comes back to put order to madness. Three powers struggle for victory and the fate of Cloudberry Kingdom hangs in the balance. Will saving Princess one last time win her love? Could true love ever stop Kobbler and the power of the Orb? The game’s own summary answers no, probably not. But hey, it’s worth a shot.
Where the Difficulty Lives
The hardcore following came from the challenges, not the story. Cloudberry Kingdom is infamous for its difficulty, and the generator is why. A level that kills you fifty times is not a wall someone built to stop you. It is a level built to match you, then pushed past what you can do.
Modes cover single player, multiplayer, co-operative and split screen, with a side view perspective. Genres listed for it include platform, puzzle, adventure and indie, with action, fantasy and comedy as themes.
The 2025 Rerelease
RedoApps brought the game back on December 12, 2025, putting it on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. A Nintendo Switch edition followed on February 2, 2026.
PlayStation 5 owners can also run the PlayStation 3 version through emulation. That makes Cloudberry Kingdom the first PS3 title to be backwards compatible with PS5 — a genuine piece of platform history, and it arrived attached to a 2013 indie platformer rather than a flagship.
| Release | Platform | Date |
|---|---|---|
| Original | PC, PS3, Wii U, Xbox 360 | 2013 |
| Rerelease | PS4, PS5 | December 12, 2025 |
| Rerelease | Nintendo Switch | February 2, 2026 |
What the Algorithm Gets Right
The adaptation is the best idea in Cloudberry Kingdom, and it is also the thing that wears thin. A generator that meets you where you are removes the hand of a designer who knew when to be cruel and when to relent. What is left is difficulty as a pure quantity, cranked until you quit.
That is why the game built a hardcore following instead of a broad one. It rewards the players who want the crank turned all the way up, and it offers them almost nothing else. The comedy framing, the Orb, Kobbler, Princess, Bob — none of it carries weight past the first hour.
A 7.1, and Why
Cloudberry Kingdom earns its reputation honestly. The Fisher algorithms do something few games of its era attempted, and the PS5 backwards compatibility makes the 2025 rerelease more than a cash grab.
But a game built on one strong mechanism has to survive on that mechanism alone, and this one does not quite. The levels generate, the physics shift, the difficulty climbs, and the player is left with a very good toy and a very thin game around it.
Cloudberry Kingdom scores 7.1 of 10.
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