You know how around Halloween you bought five bags of Fun Size Snickers to give out to trick or treaters, but somehow only three bags made it into the candy bowl and now you’re feeling really bloated and gross and you really need to look good for upcoming holiday parties so you’re eating grilled salmon three times a day and that would be fine, except all you can think about is how you really want to eat a bunch of donuts and cake and candy? Yeah, uh, me neither. However, it’s obvious that the people at Com2uS were in throes of weight loss-related fantasy when creating their latest game, Chocohero [$.99].
Before we get too far, we need to establish whether or not you should play this game. Are you diabetic? Has your dentist recommended you stay away from sweet, delicious candy? If so, you shouldn’t have a problem, because this is a video game and not real life, duh. You play as Chipster, the Chocohero the game is named for, who must save his Chocobit friends from an impending milk flood in the land of Smoresdom. These Chocobits (which look a little like bunnies, except better because they are candy) are trapped on delicious pastry ledges made of things called Cakems, which you must destroy or work around in order to rescue your friends before the floods come.
Basically, you’re constantly falling and the faster you fall, the more likely you are to rack up points, Chocobits, and powerups before the milk catches up to you. You control Chipster’s fall by either tilting your device or by using its one-touch control. The controls are perfect (though it’s not like this kind of game demands precision), and the powerups that are available are simple and well-designed. You can stop time, attract nearby coins to you, and pick up the means to unleash Fever mode (where you act like a tornado and barrel down for a few seconds, breaking everything in your path).
The game gives you a seemingly endless stream of objectives to complete (rescue X Chocobits, destroy x Cakems, etc.) that unlock progressively longer capes as you achieve them. The longer your cape, the greater your falling speed and the more likely you are to avoid the milk flood long enough to rescue more of your friends and cause even more damage to baked goods. The beauty of this is that it both gives you an incentive to keep playing and the means to progress juuust a little further each time, ensuring the game never gets boring.
Chocohero is certainly not the only game of its type out there, but it’s definitely one of the best designed. In addition to tight controls and well-designed levels, the art style and music are perfectly complementary (and, of course, super-adorable). For about a dollar, this is a really fun little diversion for pretty much any time you have a few minutes, especially when you’re waiting for your next dentist’s appointment.
