Bandai-Namco released Boomeroad worldwide two days ago as part of a suite of simple and experimental games to train new recruits from their indie developer Gyaar Studio. The concept here combines a standard 3D platformer with boomerang throwing that creates grindable rails that can be chained for extended mid-air traversal. You refresh your energy gauge by passing through rings and landing on platforms, and you can increase the gauge's capacity by collecting optional artifacts. Unfortunately, the gameplay is undercooked. You can't adjust the shape of the boomerang's arc besides flattening the upward curve a little, there's very few interactable objects (switches and fans) that force the player to throw the boomerang at them for activation, and you can in fact avoid most of these elements entirely by throwing two chained boomerang arcs to climb up and walk on top of the level's walls, skipping entire sections of the level while never running out of gauge. While I thought speedrun mode would mitigate most of these shortcomings, I don't find the movement satisfying enough because there's fairly little momentum conserved upon jumping off of rails for speeding up, so the movement itself lacks weightiness and route planning isn't very interesting when you're incentivized to just follow the set path of rings for time bonuses. I suppose there's only so much I can complain about a free game nevertheless, and although I don't see Gyaar Studio returning to this, I do think they've got a solid concept on their hands that could prove to be an interesting 3D puzzle-platformer if thoroughly fleshed out with more committal movement and tighter level design.