Review for Escape Doodland. Game for Nintendo Switch, PC and Steam, the video game was released on 30/11/2018
Imagine being quiet about your own business, when suddenly a gigantic and voracious purple monster with an unintelligent gaze appears on the horizon. Escape Doodland, from the newly formed Polish studio flukyMachine, puts us in this very uncomfortable situation.
The story of Escape Doodland is, without exaggeration whatsoever, all here. We will be called to try to rescue one of the funny inhabitants of the crazy world of Doodland chased by the mysterious and unstoppable purple kaiju. To do this, our quirky darling will launch into a breakneck race across ten terrifying themed levels, full of obstacles and deadly traps. Always taking into account the hungry beast that we will have at our heels!
Dying along the way of salvation is therefore easy, very easy. Fortunately, an immense power will come to the aid of these funny little creatures, a power that each of them has, hidden right inside (it should be said) of themselves ... The power of farts! You read very well, farts! Yes, because to neutralize obstacles, or avoid them in a daring way, we will only and exclusively resort to our pestilential intestinal gas!
Escape Doodland presents itself as a bizarre cross between a classic 2d sliding platform game and a frenetic running game.
Our Doodle, as the inhabitants of this crazy world are called, will proceed quickly to the right, chased by the monstrous creature or some other hallucinating crap, while we will have to make it jump over the infinite obstacles or activate its numerous and varied forms of flatulence. , essential to get to the end of the level alive.
Each type of fart at your disposal gives you a particular boost, such as a great acceleration, the ability to jump much higher than normal or, more than ever, to learn to master as soon as possible, asphyxiating our pursuer for a short period. , allowing us to face the escape with a little more calm.
Of course, all of our "inner strength" must be nourished. For this, along our path we will find magic beans (and what else, otherwise !?) and other bonus items, such as matches that can ignite our farts, which will allow us to continue to plague the air with thunderous life saving farts. The more beans we earn, the more we will be able to spend in the special store, so that we can afford new and incredible forms of intestinal pyrite and new cute Doodles to control as the main character. And some are out of their minds!
The world of Escape Doodland is represented entirely as if it were drawn on a notebook or notebook page. The graphic style and the design of levels and characters immediately brings to mind the listless scribbles that each of us did or still does, on the first piece of paper available during some boring meeting or class of sorts. The stylistic rendering is incredible. In its crude simplicity, the visual feeling of Escape Doodland works great, as does the sound, funny and delusional enough.
At the level of playability, we are faced with a classic title that cannot, and does not want to, shine in depth, a sort of extra-luxury jew's harp, in our opinion ideal both for a quick match between one job and another at PC, but above all for a “dynamic” platform such as Nintendo Switch. A super apt title when we have just that quarter of an hour free, perhaps away from home, which we want to use in a fun way. Escape Doodland also has another, at least according to many, enormous value which, however, it must be said, also feeds its worst flaw: we are talking about a very simple title, but extremely demanding, sometimes even too much.
Already from the main menu, this can be understood, given that the selectable difficulties are "Hard" and "Harder" (to be unlocked). Stop. While many can rightly be spurred on by a high level of challenge, it must be said that Escape Doodland in some passages is really frustrating, punishing and relentless. Some passages, not too rare, will make you swear hard for quite some time. This, combined with the very shallow depth of the whole, certainly does not help in terms of longevity and replayability.
Escape Doodland is a very interesting title, also given its very low price, ideal as a "hardcore harp" able to make us jump, for better or for worse, the nerves for the level of challenge. Too bad for some really infernal passages and for the lack of palatability in the long run but, taken for what it is, Escape Doodland turns out to be a really good choice.
► Escape Doodland is an Adventure-Action-indie-type game developed by flukyMachine and published by PlayWay SA Ultimate Games SA for Nintendo Switch, PC and Steam, the video game was released on 30/11/2018
