Unless one thing can prime a flying pig vomiting tennis balls at a tiger-moth (actually a tiger/moth hybrid) with tennis racquets for wings, then Pig Eat Ball is the wildest game you’ll see in the present day. The newest from Nathan Fouts of Mommy’s Best Games (Serious Sam Double D, Weapon Of Choice) Pig Eat Ball is a deliriously bizarre arcade puzzle-maze game which feels prefer it’s from a universe the place 90s shareware took over the world. It’s additionally reasonably good enjoyable. Check out the launch trailer and a few hands-on impressions under, plus a free demo.
Thematically, Pig Eat Ball is simply pure, intentional nonsense, peppered with RPS-worthy puns and unusual sight gags and coated in a layer of lurid inexperienced tennis-puke. Mechanically, it’s a tightly designed arcade game which takes a easy management scheme and stretches it to its limits in a large sequence of ranges, consistently introducing new puzzle-pieces and programs. Magical pig Princess Bow can fly, inhale and regurgitate. To full most ranges, it’s essential to eat all of the tennis balls within the stage, though consuming too many renders Bow too massive to suit by means of small gaps, so that you spew.
It might simply be easy and one-note, but it surely looks like each different stage introduces some odd new twist. Sometimes tennis balls shall be inaccessible, so it’s essential to use suction to tug them onto conveyor belts or in direction of tennis-playing bugs, which is able to volley the ball elsewhere. Sometimes you’ve obtained a completely new aim, like racing a group of beetles to assemble a spherical of sandwiches for an enormous off-screen yeti. Even its core guidelines get bent every so often – some ranges you’ve gotten restricted well being, whereas others are actually solved by hurling your self onto spikes to keep away from throwing up.
While your mileage might differ on the artwork (I just like the sprites, though I discover the saturation of the colors could be exhausting), I’ll brook no argument on Pig Eat Ball’s soundtrack – it whips. Three components funky, one half weird, it bounces by means of genres at a charge of knots however most tracks have a catchy sufficient bass-line or melody to maintain toes tapping. Important in an arcade game so long as this, because the game comprises lots of of ranges, normally damaged up into units of 3-5 at a time, plus shareable user-made ones. You can attempt a bit of it within the free demo on the Steam retailer web page under.
Pig Eat Ball is out now on Steam, Humble and Itch, and prices £10.25/€11.24/$13.49.
