Jono: A Platformer Game Review

In an era where multiplayer gaming is dominated by battle royales, extraction shooters, and isolated co-op lobbies, Jono (meaning ‘queue’ in Finnish) arrives as a brilliant, chaotic, and deeply communal breath of fresh air. Developed by Part Time Monkey and released on 5 October, 2026, this free-to-play indie platformer masquerades as a simple retro game. However, its core loop is a complex social experiment that completely redefines what multiplayer can mean. Tagged on Steam as Casual, Indie, and Massively Multiplayer, the community has coined a much more accurate term for the experience: “Massively Singleplayer”.

The Core Concept: One Hero, One Million Levels

The premise of Jono is as simple as it is staggering: there is only one Jono in the entire world, and the collective goal is to guide him through 1,000,000 unique levels. But you don’t control the main character whenever you want.

When you log into the game, you join a global queue. When your turn finally arrives, you are granted exactly 60 seconds of control over the shared protagonist. You must navigate the hazards, make jumps, and push the character as far as possible before your minute expires. Once the timer hits zero, the controls are instantly wrested from your hands and passed to the next person in line, who picks up the journey from the exact pixel where you left off.

This creates an unparalleled sense of communal stakes. Unlike the chaotic, conflicting inputs of Twitch Plays Pokemon…