RedDeer Roundup [End November]

THAT’S A COW
Crescent Moon Games | 126 MB | €5.99

Kicking off the second half of the month, we have That’s a Cow: an autorunner that has you controlling your cow by squirting your udder juice at full force. Really.

At its core, the game is set up almost entirely like a mobile game with you playing extremely short levels that have you guiding your cow to the end goal while picking up arbitrary coins and apples along the way that allow you to acquire new skins via a claw-machine type minigame.

Unfortunately, it also plays like a mobile game too as the game is pretty simple in design with some very hit and miss stage design. The A button will be your primary tool, as it will cause your milk to jet out at speed enabling your cow to effectively jump/hover. Tilting right will cause your cow to rocket forward at full speed, whereas tilting the other way will cause it to slow down and fire udder juice forwards to either push objects or dispose of enemies. The main issue with the concept is that the game just runs out of ideas really quickly, resulting in many that are effectively just a straight line. There are quite a few levels to work through, but the lack of challenge and variety will likely cause you to lose interest after only a few minutes or so.

VERDICT
The colourful and charming visuals, mixed with the silly premise and collectible cow skins will probably appeal to very young gamers, but anyone else will probably tire of it very quickly.

Have you ever played the pelmanism game where you need to find matching pairs? Brain Memory is basically that, but with cute little cartoon faces.

To be honest, there’s very little to say about the game itself other than it has 19 difficulty levels and 8 different card covers (these only change the backs and aren’t themed decks, unfortunately). The lowest difficulty offers a tiny little 2×2 grid, but the highest sees the screen filled with cards.

It’s a shame that there aren’t more options to choose from, although the game does have a multitude of DLC packs available to boost the number of each quite substantially. Unfortunately the DLC packs also offer way more content than the base game, making it a little frustrating that they didn’t just include them as standard. More annoyingly, these DLC packs are free in the US and 99 cents each in Europe – which will no doubt result in many consumers paying for what they could grab for free. Sure, the DLC pricing is due to how Nintendo of Europe works, but the packs really shouldn’t have existed in the first place.

VERDICT
If you like matching pairs, this is basically that… in videogame form!

Going into It’s Kooky, I was expecting a simple ‘Where’s Wally’ style game where you’re tasked with locating certain objects in a larger picture. Whilst the game does have that fundamental foundation, it also does its own thing in order to help it stand out from most other hidden object games on the console.

Rather than asking you to find specific objects, instead you’re tasked with finding a certain number of ‘silly’ things instead. It makes a nice change from having fundamentally silly scenes, as this game is all about finding out the stuff that doesn’t fit. You could be looking at an underwater scene with five silly things and end up locating spiders that don’t belong there, or completely ridiculous things such as a jellyfish with legs or a shark with a snorkel.

As you find more things (finding everything isn’t necessarily essential to progress), you’ll unlock more stages that task you with finding more silly items in bigger pictures. Some may even add in a time limit to get you to object hunt under pressure. There’s nothing particularly innovative, but it is also quite addictive.

The game has a pretty simple presentation, with its black and white visuals and stock soundtrack, but it’s all rather functional and makes your time with it quite enjoyable. There’s even an inverted colour option should you find the predominantly white visuals tricky to look at. 

VERDICT
It’s Kooky is a really fun and relaxed hidden object game that changes the formula up enough to make it stand out. There may not be a huge amount of content available here for the price, but what is here is a lot of fun.

PID
Might and Delight | 1.235 GB | €19.99

Finally we have what is my pick of this roundup: Pid. Starting out as a title for the XBLA ten years ago, this isn’t exactly a new indie title – but it sure as hell is a good one.

The premise is that your character is a child on an intergalactic school trip and happens to get left behind by the incompetent teachers running the excursion. Finding himself stranded, he is assured by some elderly gents that the next bus will be here shortly so he should just chill out and wait for a bit. Turns out that they’ve been waiting since they were your age, so it’s probably best to make your own way to the city to find further help.

Soon into your journey, you’ll uncover a device that can drop gems that project anti gravity beams. If you remember the anti gravity tunnels in Portal 2, they function in a very similar way. And so we have the main setup for what is a really cute little puzzle platformer. Gems can be stuck to any surface and deactivated at the push of a button, so manipulating the environment will help you get around. Very simple, but also very rewarding too.

This addictive gameplay loop is topped off with an unusual (yet beautiful) visual style and a great soundtrack to boot. Whilst it may not be the cheapest game by the publisher, it will also likely drop down to €1.99 with relative frequency and the game is definitely worth at least that much!

VERDICT
I wasn’t expecting much from Pid, but it turned out to be a really beautiful and addictive puzzle platformer. The MSRP maybe a little on the higher side, but given the publisher’s near constant sales, there’s no reason not to pick this one up!

And so ends our second RedDeer Roundup for the month! I hope you enjoyed this little look at the array of titles released this month by Red Deer Games.

Stay tuned for next month where we’ll be delving into the unknown!