Difficult, painstakingly tedious, and at times downright infuriating, Chip's Challenge lures unsuspecting players in with easy to grasp mechanics, simple enemies and items, and charming retro visuals. That being said, only the most masochistic of players will manage to stick around for the especially evil later levels: dying at a later part of the level and having to redo everything over and over again will be something you'll need to get used to.

I want to highlight especially levels 133 Blobdance, 89 Block Buster, and 87 Cityblock, in descending 'suffering experienced' order. At least half of my playtime was concentrated in just these 3 levels - whereas other levels can be completed in a matter of minutes. Blobdance and Cityblock tried my patience like nothing else, though I would discover Block Buster to be significantly easier with pause buffering.

Despite how (131) Totally Unfair some of the levels may be, Chip's Challenge still offers swaths of genuinely engaging and fun puzzles within its 150 levels. Take, say, 122 Totally Fair. You're tasked with acquiring 5 chips to get to the ending, 3 of which are right in front of your spawnpoint. However, trying to get the last two results in you getting stuck in a trap, and unable to move further. You'll have to brave venturing into the monster's territory to first survive, and then find a way to manipulate the chomper into standing on the unlock switch for you. Solving that would draw out a sense of satisfaction out of anybody. But even better, is when you get to revisit the concept again in 131 Totally Unfair, and then you notice all the extra things put in place for you to redo the solution in an even more clever manner.

Similarly, many of the later levels, like 120 Alphabet Soup, 134 Pain, and 123 The Prisoner had me pleasantly surprised with their fair levels of difficulty, despite seeming virtually unapproachable at first. Being able to work through these puzzles from my childhood on the steam port of this game was a ton of fun, and well worth experiencing for honing one's puzzle-solving skills.

PS. Hint for the final level: Block flicking is doable on the steam version, whereas it wasn't present in the original MS version. Block flicking is where you walk straight along besides a block, and just before you leave the tile, press the directional key as if you were to move into the block whilst still holding down the key to go straight. This makes this level so much more reasonable not having to die each time you check a block.