Super Splatters is the upgraded PC port of SpikySnail Games’ XBLA combo-driven, physics puzzler The Splatters.
For those who haven’t experience the original XBLA title The Splatters, the premise is a mix up of Angry Birds flinging, Peggle tweaking/scoring with a strong blend of quirks, innuendo laden humour and fluid physics puzzles. You fling aspiring TV stars, called Splatters, across levels with the aim of blowing up firework pods to appeal to the cheering masses and become Super Splatters.
Super Splatters is one of those puzzle games that’s fairly easy to get to grips with, but challenging enough to really get the hang of the more advanced moves you unlock as you progress. The fluid physics are pretty good, especially for a 2d puzzler, and making the most of the “flip” move, which flings you backwards and forwards, to cover the biggest surface area possible can be tricky at first. It can get frustrating, with luck seeming to have as much of an impact as skill, though I suppose that is the beauty of the fluid physics. It at least gives the levels an added bit of replay value. There is a fair amount of trial and error, which can become repetitive
You’re introduced the mechanics through tutorials which are very well done, and are not dragged out. I never felt that I wasn’t given enough time to get to grips with a particular stunt before using it, and neither was it so dumbed down and drawn out that I stopped caring. If you do get stuck on a level, there is Splatters TV to help. Splatters TV is a sort of online leaderboard where you can watch the high scores of other players. This is pretty useful either when you get stuck or just to get some hints as to how to reach the higher scores.
The big scores come from building combos by using the various “stunts”. You can slide, burst yourself on spikes, flip backwards and forwards, change direction in mid air and a few more. These come in more and more useful as the positioning of the firework pods get trickier. The need to match the right coloured pod to the same coloured Splatter make you think creatively with the stunts.
Creative is a fairly apt word for this game. The backgrounds themselves aren’t too engaging, and the stages can feel repetitive before long but the whole game leaks of creative energy. Vibrant colours, a daft excuse reason to justify flinging jelly at spikes (as if one was needed) and silly, sometimes innuendo based humour that gets a chuckle more often than not and makes the dialogue boxes worth paying attention to.
The visuals overall are really good, I like visual style and I like the menus. Everything is well animated, the Splatters are vibrant and stand out enough, but there is never really a sense of clutter. I like the artistic style, it’s engaging and the art style is quirky enough to stand out from other puzzlers. The Boss Super Splatter, the Splatter that gives you your instructions and explains everything, looks like a melted minion from Despicable Me poured into a jelly mould and given a karate headband and the rest of the platters have Cheshire Cat grins that stay smiling as the Splatters are flung all over the levels.
The soundtrack is good, nothing too memorable but it doesn’t have any annoying tunes that make you want to turn the music off completely. The sound of the Splatters doing their thing is good too, enough little variances so you don’t hear the same sound so often you want to puncture your ear drums, like some similar puzzlers.
I didn’t encounter many problems, there were a few times the game froze for a few seconds, normally during the transitions between rounds. The biggest problem happened during some of the tutorial segments. A few times the screen would just go black whilst I was being told about the finer points of a new mechanic. The game would reappear a few seconds later but I had missed something that I had to half-guess at to finish the tutorial.
Overall, the game is fun. The challenge is just about right to make you keep playing, without it being so infuriatingly impossible that you just give up. The visuals are good, the little writing in the game is amusing and the sound design is solid. The trial and error and element of luck can get frustrating. It’s quirky, it’s got charm and replay value but there just seems to be something missing. Just a certain extra hook that would push it from a good puzzle game to a really good one.
The game is available on Steam, via SpikySnail games directly and is also available for Mac with a Linux version coming at a later date. Check out the trailer below.
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