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Biscuit Barrel

by J Nash (October 15th, 2010 at 2:58 am)

I can’t even begin to justify this, but despite not getting on at all with the leapy runny swingy genre, I’ve been playing Devsisters’ blatant rip-off freebie Oven Break for most of the evening. There’s something about the combination of cheeriness and peril (best exemplified by your gingerbread bloke’s heroic squint flicking to wide-eyed goggling panic by the simple act of jumping) that’s electrified my nodes.

That’s the second biscuit game this week. I hope someone’s working on Rich Tea Mysteries. (Except it’ll be a hidden object thing.)

Possibly it’s the neat wrinkle whereby the Slide button doubles unambiguously as the swing, trumping Hellkid’s press and hold; perhaps it’s the way I seem to get slightly further each time; maybe it’s the tickling pleasantries of things like the easily filled FREEDOM bonus bar, the colourful obstacles and the ridiculous title screen music; probably it’s not the occasional clumsiness like the contrast-y Next Level alert managing to obscure any holes in the floor for a second or two.

(Incidentally, do all these games have Jump and Slide and Swing now? Maybe the next generation of rip-offs can add shooting and maybe some match-three.)

Ha. That’s awkward. The whole point of this is to mention the full version dropping to 59p/€0,79/99¢, and now I’ve broken away long enough to buy it, it’s not nearly as much fun — the freebie is the escape game, with the pay version adding global leaderboards for a second, harder map. Now I remember why I binned Hellkid. Quick, I’ll post this before all the goodwill goes up in smoke like Gingerbread Bloke, whom I’ve just dropped in the evil soup again. Blargh.

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