If I were to tell you a game about paint could offer edge-of-your-seat action, I’d expect you to call me mad. And yet here I am, telling you that very thing. Freaking Inkies puts a new spin on the old experience of matching colored items to make them disappear. That new spin? Freaking Inkies is a crazy shooter about destroying monsters with splatters of like-colored paint.
Placing your thumbs on either side of your iDevice, you’ll touch primary colors on either side of the screen to shoot. If you want blue, place both of your thumbs on blue. If you want red, place them on red. You’ll aim using tilt and make sure to press the matching paint color when you have a monster in your sights. It sounds simple, and it is… until you encounter your first orange monster.
While you only have primary colors at your disposal, monsters come in both primary and secondary colors, meaning you’ll need to mix the colors you’re shooting to take them out. To eliminate orange monsters you’ll need one thumb on red and the other on yellow. To eliminate purple ones you’ll need one thumb on red and the other on blue. If it’s green… well, you get the idea.
Freaking Inkies is fast, frantic, and very fun. Even if the game was made up of no more than this color-mixing combat, it would be a strong enough mechanic to stand on its own. Thankfully the team at Atakama Labs saw fit to simply make this the basis for a variety of game modes that you’ll encounter as you play through the game’s main challenge mode. Try and take out parachuting monsters, hunt monsters in the dark, play a paint monster slot machine… the game styles go on and on.
Freaking Inkies isn’t like any game we’ve ever played before. It’s a paint game, but it’s about twitch-shooting rather than art. It’s also something of a puzzler, forcing you to remember which combination of primary colors will make purple, orange or green in a split second. It is, in a phrase, one-of-a-kind. And it’s a game with a lot of charm. The monsters have an endearing cuteness about them. The backgrounds, made up of interesting visuals like sheet music and old newspapers tinted in an intentionally drab sepia, provide a great contrast to the colourful monsters and paint play.
The tilt aiming feels perfect – not unlike the controls in Tilt to Live. And if thinking on your feet to generate color combinations wasn’t crazy enough, the game is made up of more than 100 challenges. That’s not to say there are 100 game types, but constantly having different game types thrown at you as you progress means you’re never engaging in the same experience for very long. With a tremendous amount of gameplay in the main game and a free play mode for those who master what the challenge mode has to offer, Freaking Inkies is more than just a unique and fun experience – it’s a great value too. If you’re getting tired of the same old genres and experiences, Freaking Inkies is the breath of fresh air you’ve been waiting for.
App Store Link: Freaking Inkies, $2.99
