Offspring Fling

Developer: Kyle Pulver
Steam Release: May 2012
Hours Played: 3.1
Similar To: 10 Second Ninja / Dyna Bomb / League of Evil / Mute Crimson+
Rating: 2/5 Parsnips



GAMEPLAY
The oddly titled Offspring Fling comes wrapped in an 16-bit style so you get chunky pixels larger than grains of sugar. Fortunately, this one is less about graphics and more about gameplay but more specifically... speed-runs. You will want to smash that crumby time you got earlier! On double-clicking the title of the level from the start-screen, you're taken to a landscape that's initially frozen with a time to beat clearly displayed. Your character is a yellow, fluffy bird and it is your job to pick up all your offspring from the landscape and get them and yourself out and through the exit as fast as you possibly can. Your basic movement allows you to go left, right or jump but you may also pick up your offspring, carry them, put them down or fling them.
 

BALANCE & PACE
As soon as you press a key or button, the time starts ticking and it's away you go! Later, you have to figure out how to operate different barriers with buttons. Here, it's about figuring out the optimum route and then executing that route in your best time. Times are recorded to one-hundredth of a second and you are awarded a gold flower if you complete the level in a good time. Also - and this is a great feature - you have the ghost outline of your character doing his best time in the background so you always know if you're desperately close or embarrassingly far behind when you're out to improve your time. Later, you get to try to beat the developer's ghost - no easy task I might add.



PRESENTATION & DESIGN
As a 16-bit mobile game you're not going to be bowled over by graphics but, as mentioned, the joy is all in the gameplay. To facilitate this, your character moves smoothly and responsively. Sound-effects are all basic 1980s style blips and bleeps and this is perfectly fine. The soundtrack, meanwhile, is a sweeping corny tune that might well get on your nerves so you'll be thankful that this nuisance can be switched off. The menu for Offspring Fling is simple and user-friendly and often associated with mobile games. On the bottom right you have buttons for menus that are mainly for unimportant things like; Stats that show various figures (like how often you've fallen in lava or the longest time you've spent in the air); a Level Editor; Options that tweak very basic settings; a button to Load saved runs and one for Credits. 


PROGRESS SYSTEM
What makes the start-screen efficient is that it comes loaded with all your best times which you can peruse and scroll through at your leisure. Double-clicking on a title takes you straight to that level. These can be scrolled through and there are apparently over 100 of them in total but you are not shown all these at first. Completing a level gets you a time and a blue flower if good enough but the game also challenges you to acquire a Gold Time where you can receive a gold flower. This is tough at first but can be achieved depending on how rigorous you want to practice. It's all about figuring out the optimum route, having a few cracks and executing it properly. A screen appears at the end showing your time and if you have beaten your previous time (and by how much).

CONCLUSION
It's hard not to compare Offspring Fling with that benchmark of precision platformers: Super Meat Boy. But I have to say that this game compares with it very well. The character is very responsive to the controls and jumps longer and higher when you keep your finger on the jump button whereas it does little dinky jumps when it's pressed quickly. This is definitely something to remember when you attempt to shave off those valuable one-hundredths of a second. Like the excellent Nimbus, Offspring Fling also incorporates an excellent ghost feature and this is a big plus. Restarting is instant - another key requirement in precision platforming - and the game really does make you want to get better and better at trimming off those fractions of a second. It's a thumbs up from me!