The Adventures of Shuggy is the 1st full Xbox Live Arcade game from developer Smudged Cat Games, and it appears the squad has learned from its Xbox Indie projects Timeslip and A Bomb`s Way. Shuggy is a solid entry in the "difficult platformer" genre (Super Meat Boy, N ) that stands out from the crowd thanks to its cartoonish Halloween theme.
Shuggy is a cunning little vampire creature who inherits his grandfather`s massive castle. The only job is it`s good of all kinds of monsters. Over 100 rooms populate the structure, and each one contains a different challenge.
When entering a new room, you never experience what to expect. The sole constant is that you get to gather all the green gems to make a stage. Sometimes this only requires making tricky jumps while dodging spiders, spikes, and wasps on the way. Most of the time, however, the tricky platforming is combined with enough of brain straining.
Some rooms give you total master of room rotation, allowing Shuggy to run on walls and ceilings. Other times you must guide little orange creatures to free caged gems, outrun a spike ball chasing you consume a corridor, or wrap a magic rope around several gears to give the way ahead. In a nod to P.B. Winterbottom, another game type records you and automatically sends out a clone that mimics your movements. The construction? The clones will kill you if you meet them.
These examples are just a sample of the surprising variety of gameplay that Shuggy offers. This constant stream of new challenges is the game`s greatest strength, but not every way is as good as the last. I especially disliked the zombie mode in which your character moves automatically while you see the peak of his jumps by holding down the push for different lengths of time. Platforming is all about control, and not having any is no fun.
Prepare to die a lot, as one hit from eve the smallest enemy sends you support to the beginning of the stage. Fortunately, the stage reload is the fastest I`ve always seen, so you won`t take long to linger on that final death. Despite this fluid system, it doesn`t help calm your frayed nerves on the longer, harder, more complex levels when you burn the dust going for the very last gem.
Each of the separate castle corridors contains a menacing boss with a unique battle mechanic. For instance, one forces you to make multiple clones of yourself to bear on switches to rob a possessed boiler boss of its steam power, while a later zombie scarecrow requires you to track it down with a glowing cross, tricking it into a trap.
The difficult boss battles are the only bottlenecks in the game. If you hit a particularly tricky normal stage, you can branch off and try other levels in your request to unlock the adjacent room. If you`re having trouble on a boss, however, you`re stuck until you can get him.
Shuggy also contains over 30 co-op levels specifically built for two players. This mode encourages constant communication as you hit switches for each other and go for your allotted gems. Most of the gameplay twists from the single-player experience are present here in gain to new options that could just be realized with a partner, like steering the program he or she is riding through spike-lined corridors. If either of you dies, however, both of you want to go over. Be disposed for pity and resentment alike. Unfortunately, co-op mode is not available for online play, and the only online option is a throwaway head-to-head mode that pits two players against each other in a competitor to gather the most gems.
If you`re a fan of games like Super Meat Boy and you`re looking for some interesting twists to the platforming genre, The Adventures of Shuggy is worth checking out. Smudged Cat`s first entry in the big leagues is a hopeful start, and has me frantic for the studio`s next project.
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