Grade: B+
Games can be exciting, puzzling, scary, competitive and – occasionally – moving. Can they be funny? Not often. But this lovingly crafted indie cartoon adventure has a creditable bash at it. The protagonist is an oval-headed yellow homunculus in a shirt and tie, as if Family Guy’s Stewie Griffin, Dilbert and a minor Simpsons character had been squished in a particle collider. He is dispatched to the fictional Yorkshire town of Barnsworth by his boss to do… something. But the mayor won’t meet him so he finds himself wandering around the town.
‘Thank goodness you’re here!’ say various townspeople in ee-bah-gum accents, before inviting you to help them out of some absurd pickle. It’s not clear why they’re so pleased to see you. It’s not as if you have any useful talents: the only controls are ‘up’, ‘down’, ‘left’, ‘right’, ‘jump’ and ‘slap’, so you roam the scene hopping up and down, slapping everything you encounter. Eventually, you locate a lost spanner inside a haddock on the fish-and-cigarettes stall, or slide to the rescue on a giant pat of butter.
Barnsworth is a cousin of sorts to Viz’s Fulchester, with notes of smutty seaside postcards, Where’s Wally? tableaux and 1970s comics. The town is the star of the show. It’s littered with fags, overstuffed bin bags, parked vans, fast-food outlets, pound shops and abandoned bottles of white cider. The market has a stall called ‘Raj’s Chargers’ and there’s a loony in the town square campaigning to bring back asbestos. Hop, hop, hop, slap, slappity-slap you go. Gameplay D+; affectionate comic portrait of Northern Powerhouse town A-. Insert your own joke about ‘levelling up’.
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