Posts Tagged ‘offspring fling’

‘Tis The Season For Humble Bundle And Indie Royale

The holidays are a time of indecision. Who should you visit? What ugly, uncomfortable seasonal sweater should you wear? Which deity(s) should you dedicate your hedonistic blood celebrations to (aside from Horace, of courace)? And, most importantly, what will you buy before/after your relatives shower you with socks or rocks or whatever it is that passes for a universal gift these days? But it doesn’t end there. Oh no. There are, after all, 927.45 trillion videogames to choose between, so you may as well just start sobbing and curl up in a fetal futility ball right now. Unless… no, no. That’s crazy. But maybe… no. It’ll never work. Ah, what the hell: bundles! Both Indie Royale and Humble Bundle have new offerings up, and they’re quite tempting, if I do say so myself.

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RPS Feature Picture Perfect

Wot I Think: Snapshot

Photography-based puzzle-platformer Snapshot is the latest from depict1 dev Retro Affect (one half of which is Kyle Pulver, he of Offspring Fling fame). Long-anticipated, it finally gave itself to the world last week. Here’s what I made of it.

Lovely, lovely, lovely, lovely, lovely, lovely, lovely.

Utter bastard.
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RPS Feature I could never be a mother

Wot I Think: Offspring Fling

I’ve been celebrating Easter by watching hundreds of cute ickle yellow chicks die horribly. And in the game. By which I mean Kyle Pulver’s avian-abusing puzzle-platformer Offspring Fling.

Fifteen or twenty years ago, this would have been on a magazine cover. Several magazine covers, in fact. People would have forked out £40 or £50 for it. It would have been the creation of sizeable team, with a corporation’s annual finances resting on its shoulders. In 2012, a game of Offspring Fling’s cleverness and completeness is $7.99, made by one man and snuck onto the internet with little-to-no fanfare. This isn’t news to anyone, I realise, but occasionally I glance back at how things have changed over the last few years and shake my head in happy disbelief.

Offspring Fling, then, is a puzzle platformer of the sort that used to abound in the early 90s, of the sort where you’re there to rescue the helpless alongside dodging danger yourself. You’re in the feather frame of a mother-bird, collecting her scattered chicks from around cartoon levels occupied by platforms and assorted vicious wildlife then fleeing to the exit.
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Reverse Child Catcher: Offspring Fling

If Edmund McMillen had made this game, the offspring would burst much more frequently

Kyle Pulver, superior veteran of a thousand gamejams, has expanded a riff on the theme of motherhood that emerged from his brain last year, making it into a full release for PC and Mac. It’s a platform game, with puzzles made up of switches, blocks and infant forest animals deflecting around the levels. The clue as to your maternal ability is in the title: Offspring Fling. As the mother of a sizable brood of cuddly critters, your method of transporting them to safety is to balance them on your head and then lob them out of harm’s way. Of course, as you progress through the 100+ levels throwing your kids around the place becomes increasingly hazardous, as they begin to act more like soft, organ-filled pinballs than living, dying creatures. Watch.

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