Captain Velvet Meteor: The Jump+ Dimensions shouldn't be thought of as a Shonen Jump crossover. Not because crossovers are bad, nor because it's an “elevated crossover” or anything dumb like that. The plain and simple truth is that it isn't really a crossover at all: SPY×FAMILY's Loid Forger never rubs shoulders with Princess from Tis Time for "Torture," Princess, for example. So here's the big red flag for people coming into this: this is a game about a kid going on Doug Funnie-esque flights of fancy as he looks for solutions to his myriad problems; characters from Shonen Jump+ properties cameo in each level, each of them imparting some form of wisdom to the protagonist, Damien. That, at its most basic stripped-to-the-studs level, is what this game is about.

The difference is that this is a lot better written than Doug ever was, and Damien has bigger problems than worrying about going to jail over a papier-mâché volcano, such as facing his beloved dog—who has suddenly gone violent—barking viciously over a bird he just mauled.

Captain Velvet Meteor has two sides to it: there's Damien's normal life, where he navigates his house, runs chores assigned to him by his parents, and locates bonus stickers as collectibles. While navigating the real world, Damien can encounter some real-world problems like his aforementioned dog or an uncomfortable run-in with a well-meaning old woman. From here, Damien transitions (in a very cute interactive sequence) into his Captain Velvet Meteor persona within his imagination, framing his day-to-day life as having crash-landed on an alien planet. Damien will encounter some kind of anomaly, and find himself investigating it with a character from one of the manga he reads—which would be one of the Jump+ cameos in this game. Each of the featured characters is in some way connected to the problem at hand: Damien's rift with his father materializes as Captain Velvet Meteor exploring with Loid Forger. Damien confronting his dog shifts into Captain Velvet Meteor approaching a giant dog-monster with the help of Kaiju No. 8's Hibino Kafka. Dealing with the intimidating old woman has Captain Velvet Meteor exploring the world with the innocent worldview of Slime from Slime Life. Here, the game shifts into a strategy game, albeit a simple one.

It can be very hard to write children; once you get past the general apathy a lot of folks have towards kids, there's the matter of their competence, their innocent worldview, the fact that their lack of understanding shouldn't be taken for incompetence or stupidity by any means, and that their own personal worlds are at once small but very dense. So it goes that Damien finds himself struggling to cope with a new life that's been thrust upon him: after an entire lifetime in France, he now lives in Japan after his parents moved. He's scared of the world around him, stymied by how different his new setting feels, intimidated by the language barrier he must overcome, and quietly resentful of how this massive change was forced upon him without any input. Like many of us, he takes refuge in manga (although it should be noted that he's from France, which has an extremely healthy manga industry apart from the United States' own). Inspired by the stories he's read, he creates an alternate persona: Captain Velvet Meteor, who in his own right is probably based off of Damien having read a ton of Valerian. Exploring his inner worlds lets Damien make sense of his outer world; his violent dog is just overwhelmed by the new scenery around him, lashing out in fear more than anything. The old woman doesn't mean to be scary, she's just someone Damien isn't used to yet; learning the language reveals she's a perfectly sweet person. The story is one of Damien growing accustomed to a new home through his relationship with fiction; it's a very resonant story, as many could potentially attest to, and one that works for both children and adults.

Meanwhile, there is a lot of leeway given in Captain Velvet Meteor's missions, which could also make the game very attractive to both children and adults alike who struggle with strategy games. The different missions can be tackled at any time: each “chapter” focuses on a specific problem, and at any moment Damien/Captain Velvet Meteor can retreat to his spaceship to return to the real world and attempt a different level. There isn't an experience point system, so you can't brute force your way through levels by grinding, but you can get a better grasp of the game through other chapters. Each chapter has a different cameo character, with their own unique powers: Loid Forger is equipped with his signature pistol with a silencer, Hibino Kafka has his Kaiju powers, and Slime has his slimy body. Defeating enemies restores health, some enemies grant bonus points that you can use to move extra tiles, and some drop energy that you can pick up and store for powerful super-combos. Meanwhile, each cameo character has a weaker combo attack that can also be used. So battles become puzzles where you try to maximize the amount of damage the Captain and his friends do to enemies while using combos and super-combos to both stay alive and manipulate the field. Slime, for example, can be shot out of the Captain's blaster, bouncing off of mirrors and damaging anything in his path, making him useful for hitting distant switches. Hibino and the Captain, on the other hand, shoot out a weak shockwave that knocks all enemies back a few tiles. There are no complicated menus, no attacks to select, not even numbers for damage: everything is determined by your positioning when the turn ends. It's very approachable without sacrificing the challenge, especially when later stages introduce optional win conditions and set pieces like lava tiles that you can be pushed into—and with the Captain and his companion sharing the same health pool, you need to keep an eye on both of them to ensure they don't get overwhelmed. New gimmicks and obstacles are introduced at a decent pace, keeping the stages from becoming too rote, and the different abilities between the cameo characters make experimenting with each of them both easy and fun.

There are some issues with the game, make no mistake: the visuals can feel a little low-rent (although the game animates smoothly both in docked mode and in handheld mode on a Nintendo Switch). There's no voice acting at all. The translation can feel a bit “off” at times, with some bizarre grammar or syntax. But what we have here is a very profound story of a child and the ways fiction helps him navigate his life. This feels like a very special game, one that really does take advantage of its connection to established IPs; not for the sake of a crossover, but for how much these characters mean to readers around the world, and how much they can teach us about themselves.