Unicorns & Magic Cats: Tasha's Game

Double Fine, the prettiest and handsomest games developers in all the lands, are responsible for the shiny bauble of jumpy joy that is Psychonauts, and thus shall forever be carried aloft the shoulders of all with taste and dignity. This is in no small part thanks to the boss man, Tim "Big Long List of LucasArts Games" Schafer. And of course they're currently working on Brutal Legend (although there's all manner of confusion after Activision/Blizzard, in a move of such spectacular stupidity, dropped it during their Jeff Goldblum/fly styled merge). So another thing they do is put up fun Flash games on their website.

Only three so far, but each is well worth a play. The latest is Tasha's Game, from the drawing hand of Tasha Harris and the programming mind of Klint Honeychurch. It's a cute platforming affair with a splendidly new idea in its middle.

Some strange black tentacle thing has captured a bunch of Tasha's friends, in the floaty cloud world she doesn't seem to mind finding herself in. Accompanied by her magic cat, Snoopy (I love this job), she has to hop her way to each of them. To get there, she needs Snoopy's help, as he conjures platforms for her. So Tasha moves with the WAS keys, and Snoopy is the mouse cursor. Collecting icons to create platforms, you can then plop them on the screen wherever they need to be. Different platform types do different things, and it's their judicious placement that the game's all about.

It's nice and quick, and pretty simple to play through. But also splendidly funny, and all happy-cute. Rainbows say hi, unicorns shout out encouragement. It's like a girl's high school notebook doodles were magicked into a game. As well should they all.

Rather splendidly, each time you load the game it has a different silly title. "tasha's brutal circus unlimited', 'tasha's donkey touchdown time', 'tasha's enchanted defender of doom'. Methinks me smells a PERL script at work. So, go play it.