Developer: CINEMAX, s.r.o.
Category: Precision Platformer
Released: Dec 2006
Usual Price: £6.99
Hours Played: 2
Controller Compatible: No
Rating: 2 Stars
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In Gumboy Crazy Adventures you traverse a landscape made up of a variety of fauna, woodland and plantlife. The usual principles apply: you collect gems and items along the way and then exit at the portal when you're done, all the while going for your best time. All good? Well, not really.
Unfortunately, like the menus, gameplay is sluggish and slow with the controls just not being as responsive as they should be. True, while changing your physical properties gives the game variety and is fine as a concept - and in some cases calls upon skills in moving delicately and subtly rather than by using brute-force - the slow-paced application of certain tasks along with the accompanying high level of difficulty actually leads to the game being more frustrating than fun. Also, in one instance, just trying to get the bleedin' ball to bounce upwards onto a higher ledge proved maddening. Challenge is fine, challenge is good, but when that just turns into raw frustration - that's just bad.
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Menus, Progress & Stats
By exploring just the menu design things do not bode well. There is a laggy quality to the menus where there seem to be frames-per-second issues. You need to pause while arrowing through the paths for the game to catch up in the main-menu and likewise when arrowing through the boring level-select screen. Plugging in the XBox controller confuses the game and makes the game flicker and crash. Navigation is counter-intuitive and poor throughout. On the plus side, you do get to see a list of all levels (albeit arranged in a dull and uninteresting way) and it does save your best score and time for each.
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Gameplay
The game is all about collecting gems and glowing orbs across a landscape and then finding your way to the exit portal to finish the level and to record a best score and time. You control a shape-changing globule that can also change into a star, a lighter ball that is almost like air, a heavier square, or a sticky tar-like sphere that sticks to the surfaces. Movement is generally restricted to left and right but you can also turbo-charge in either direction (when you're on a surface) to increase speed and momentum. There is a "Jump" move but this is quite subtle and not always available.
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Conclusion
The artwork, level design and general concept behind the game all should add up to making Gumboy Crazy Adventures an absorbing title. Unfortunately, the actual delivery of those ideas are not applied rigorously enough and the game ends up being lightweight, glitchy and just not very much fun to play.
Fortunately, games with these general ideas have been done by others and have been done much better with a stronger sense of stability and polish (Fly'n, Adventures of Shuggy, Mutant Blobs Attack, Pixeljunk Eden and possibly Element4l). All of which means I cannot recommend that this be added to the library of those looking for a solid precision platformer.
The artwork, level design and general concept behind the game all should add up to making Gumboy Crazy Adventures an absorbing title. Unfortunately, the actual delivery of those ideas are not applied rigorously enough and the game ends up being lightweight, glitchy and just not very much fun to play.
Fortunately, games with these general ideas have been done by others and have been done much better with a stronger sense of stability and polish (Fly'n, Adventures of Shuggy, Mutant Blobs Attack, Pixeljunk Eden and possibly Element4l). All of which means I cannot recommend that this be added to the library of those looking for a solid precision platformer.
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