Freedom Planet

Freedom Planet is a 2D platform game. The player directs one of three characters—Lilac, Carol, or Milla—to run and jump through levels and destroy robotic enemies. Levels contain obstacles such as corkscrews, loop-the-loops, hills, ramps, and rock walls. The player fights a miniboss in the middle of each level and a main boss at the end, after which the story is advanced by cutscenes. Because of its aesthetics, level design, and fast-paced gameplay, Freedom Planet has been compared to the Sonic the Hedgehog games released for the Sega Genesis in the early 1990s.

Unlike in Sonic, the player character has a hit point meter instead of a ring-based health system. To refill this meter, the player collects red leaves dropped by enemies and scattered throughout levels. Lilac's and Carol's maximum health are seven leaves, Milla's is four. Being hit by enemies' and bosses' attacks reduces the character's health, and a life is deducted when no health remains.

The game begins as Sash Lilac and Carol Tea—an anthropomorphic dragon and wildcat —rescue a duck-billed creature named Torque after his spacecraft crash lands. At Torque's request, the three set out to protect a powerful relic called the Kingdom Stone. This involves them in a conflict between three nations on their planet: Shuigang, a country militarized by its new king, Dail; Shang Mu, led by the wealth-obsessed Mayor Zao ( or ); and Shang Tu, whose Royal Magister is unprepared for war. Lilac and Carol rush to the Kingdom Stone's shrine but are waylaid by the Shang Tu officers General Gong and Neera Li, who doubt that the Stone is threatened.

The protagonists arrive just as the Stone is stolen by Spade, a henchman hired by Zao. After the shrine collapses, Carol is separated from Lilac and pinned by rubble, but gets saved by the timid Basset Hound Milla () Basset.

Freedom Planet was conceived in late 2011 by American game designer and programmer Sabrina DiDuro, who had just founded the independent developer GalaxyTrail Games a few years prior. Using the Multimedia Fusion 2 engine, the game was intended to be a small Flash game to "hone [her] skills as a game designer" but quickly grew to become a full indie game set in an original universe. After struggling to find a fitting name for the game, it was made up of the first two words that came in DiDuro's mind, "freedom" and "planet".

Before becoming its own intellectual property, the game started off as a Sonic fangame; a version of the game only seen in early footage show rings and Doctor Eggman as the game's main antagonist. Early on, DiDuro had decided that the Sonic affiliation would hold back the game. By the time of the first publicly released demo, the rings were replaced with red leaves and the characters' abilities were altered. Charging energy for special moves was dependent on Lilac's movement speed was changed to be generating gradually instead as it proved too difficult to control.

Tony Ponce of Destructoid reacted positively about the demo for Freedom Planet and commented that it was "nice to see a well-established style or formula applied to a new world with original characters". Similarly, Eurogamer's Jeffrey Matulef described the game's preview as "an indie Sonic-esque platformer done right", and enjoyed the redesigned health system. Dominic Tarison of IndieStatik complimented the game's "new and unfamiliar configuration" of elements from classic 16-bit games, but criticized the amount of viewable gameplay area. John Polson of IndieGames.com believed that "the spectacles like loops and wall runs ... [are not] as magical to do or watch" as in Sonic games, but he encouraged platformer fans to download the demo.

Nathan Grayson of Kotaku praised the demo for its balance of Genesis Sonic elements and original content: he described the product as "a love letter to classic Sonic, except when it's not". He praised the game's enemies, but experienced minor control issues. Pacing was remarked to be slower than that of the Genesis Sonic games because of the added combat sequences, though Grayson felt that this gave the player time to explore and appreciate the level design. Grayson was critical of the voice acting.