It seems like gore sells on the App Store recently, doesn’t it? Take Happy Wheels, the challenging platformer that was a surprising hit on the App Store partly because of the wonderful explosions of bones and blood that accompany each of your (frequent) failings. If you think about it, we are extremely used to death in our games (Mario doesn’t bounce back when he falls off a platform – he meets an untimely, violent death), but those deaths are often bloodless, a sanitized failure that makes a game suitable for all ages while still retaining the mechanic of dying equals losing. Cute Things Dying Violently ($0.99), ApathyWorks’ recent iOS port of its Xbox Live Indie Games hit, declares from as early as the title that gore is central in this puzzle-platformer game, but one shouldn’t think that CTDV is all about the gore.
The blood fountains that you’ll so often see while playing the game are a decorative element that shouldn’t draw attention away from the great ideas CTDV has. While the game has some questionable control scheme decisions that often make levels more difficult than they should otherwise be, CTDV is an enjoyable game with plenty of content to play through. Add to that some dark humor and blood spatter, and you have yourself an entertaining puzzle-platformer game with plenty of wit.
When I started playing CTDV, its gameplay brought back memories of one of my favorite early 90s games, Lemmings, the game where a mindless army of, well, lemmings simply walks non-stop and it’s your mission to guide them to their destination. CTDV‘s cute little critters will similarly walk non-stop, and it’s up to you to help them get to their destination, an elevator waiting to take them to the next level. You have several tools to help your little critters including moving them around (only along the platform they were originally on) and, of course, flicking them Angry Birds-style. An early level will have you flinging your critters over some spikes to press down on a button that will open the elevator doors to your freedom. Simple, right? Well, not quite as this is only the beginning of all the troubles your little critters will get into.
The fun part of CTDV is all the clever ideas the developer throws your way as you play through the six challenge levels. I won’t talk about all of them because part of the fun was figuring out what new mechanic the developer has come up with, but I’ll share some simply to show how CTDV is more than just an Angry Bird clone with walking rather than stationary birds. The basic mechanic is flinging critters over, through, or under obstacles that threaten to perform instantaneous dissections of your critters. However, as I was playing the game, I gradually found out that you actually get to interact with more level objects than just your critters.
For instance, you’ll sometimes have to flick the critter and then quickly move a spring so the creature can bounce at the correct angle. Other times, you will actually flick a spring to go meet the falling critter halfway through its fall and help it bounce to its destination. There are button-operated fans that help your critters navigate levels, exploding bombs, disappearing blocks, and much, much more. There are even bosses that require specific strategies to defeat. I’ll stop here because, again, I won’t spoil the fun. But know that the game will continuously surprise you and will offer a different type of challenge than your typical flinging game.
With so much going on in the game and with such inventive ideas, the game needed a way to inform so as to entertain rather than frustrate. The developer chose to go with text bubbles that will cheekily tell you how different mechanics or items work. While the text bubbles are quite witty and occasionally dark (dark humor is often my kind of humor), they were still a bit of a pain to read not because of the content but because they interrupted the flow of the game. The developer himself in the game’s post-mortem (albeit for the Xbox version) acknowledged that many players don’t like to have their tutorials in words or will simply skip even a small wall of text. The information provided in those text bubbles is essential to progressing in the game, so I can see how this method of conveying crucial game information falls a bit short for those who simply want to get on with playing.
The main issue you’ll have with the game is the way you interact with the critters and the other objects in the game. If you want to move a critter around, you simply drag it. However, if you want to flick it, you have to double-tap and hold, then drag, and then release. This double tapping is trickier to do in the heat of the moment because those little guys aren’t stationary targets. Add to that many instances when you need to act quickly to send a critter where it needs to be, and you’ll have many moments of miscommunication between you and your critters. The game offers an additional way of controlling the critters (you hold on each side of the screen), but that’s even slower than the original one, at least for me.
I don’t know why the developer didn’t simply go with hold-drag-release (I’m sure he has his reasons), but I think it would have worked better. I also had problems when trying to see how a critter would bounce in a narrow corridor as the trajectory line kept getting wonky. People in our forums had similar issues with controlling their critters, so I’m not the only one. The game does offer a sensitivity slider that helps adjust the control mechanic to your taste. While the control scheme wasn’t a deal-breaker, it did make many levels harder than they otherwise would have been.
Let’s return to the blood and gore now, shall we? As I said in the beginning of this review, the trend of “goring up" game is alive and well on the App Store, and CTDV will fit right in. The most predominant use of gore in the game is when a critter meets a saw for the first and final time, their brief encounter resulting in half a critter bouncing on one side of the screen and the other half on the other side, both spraying blood all over the level and bathing parts of it red. Your critters will also be electrocuted, blown up, and meet their doom in many other ways that I won’t spoil for you. While at the end of the day the “dying violently" part of the game is more minimal than you would expect, it does add another layer of entertainment because let’s face it, blood spatter in games can be funny.
The game’s visuals are well made but nothing to write home about. The critters are cute (at least when they are whole), and the levels look bright and well designed. The visuals won’t win any awards, but you won’t be playing CTDV for the visuals. Fortunately, you won’t be playing it for the music either since it’s tolerable, at best. However, the gore part of the game is well made visually and that does add an extra touch to the game, elevating it from competent to, well, a bit more than competent. I did like the Bosses because they are very well-made and actually funny to watch. The menus are merely utilitarian, but they are fine, even though the various icons could have been smaller on the iPad.
The game offers plenty of content with over forty levels to play through and, as is the trend recently, a level editor for those who want to kill and maim cute little critters. There’s also a level of the week to play through for added entertainment and also many funny achievements to get. Since the game is quite tricky, you’ll spend plenty of time playing each level (especially as the game gets more difficult), so there are many hours of entertainment in CTDV and all those for the price of $0.99 with no IAPs. I think you’ll enjoy playing CTDV if puzzle-platformers are your cup of tea and especially if you like adding blood rather than cream in that tea. The game offers the option to remove adult language, so you could even let your kids kill critters without worrying about the game’s language. The game is universal but, once more, no iCloud support. Still, CTDV is a clever game that keeps throwing new ideas and challenges your way. While the controls needed some more work and the tutorials could have been delivered differently, I enjoyed sending my critters to their doom. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have so many critter funerals to attend to.
