Is This The Next Super Meat Boy?
Developed by Lowtek Games, Out for NES, Dreamcast (yes, really), Steam.
Price- For Digital release £9.99, Physical release £50.00 and for Special Edition release £100.00
The Premise
In this side-scrolling 2D platformer game, you play as Henry the Hyperactive Flea. Why is he hyperactive? Honestly, don’t put too much thought into that yet, as here at Gamerhub, we’re pretty sure that sites like 4chan and Tumblr will do all that for you. Instead, appreciate him for what he honestly is: A flea that can’t stop jumping about! The object of this game is remarkably similar, and harkens back to the days of Super Mario Bros. Collect the blood vials, avoid the beasts and get to the end of the level. Simple, right? Oh, our sweet summer-born gamers, if you’re after an easy ride with a very nostalgic yet highly addictive game, you’ve thought wrong.
History of The Game
We admit, Gamers, that the only reason we’re putting this section into the review is due to the fact that it was started by a crowdfunder and does what it actually promised from the word go. In the beginning of this story, a Dundonian by the name of Alastair Low wanted to design his own NES homebrew game and release it to the retorgaming market. Ally is no stranger to the gaming world, and worked at Ninja Kiwi for 7 years, but got incredibly frustrated at the lack of options for dyslexic people within the gaming world, so went into business for himself, to create dyslexic friendly games, unlike Pokémon, with their reams and reams of text.
Eventually, after hiring a crack team of coders (Dale Coop and Ross Kilgariff), they came up with side scroller game called Flea, that was meant to be only on the Dreamcast and NES, but thanks to the people of Kickstarter, is now also available on Steam, which is where we got our resident foul-mouth to have a go at playing it. Over to you, Davey… (We’re cringing at this!)
The Struggle
Hello, Gamerhub, I’m Davey. It’s fair to say I’m a huge fan of retrogaming, my Pikachu tattoo on my left arm notwithstanding, I’ve played more games from days gone by than I’ve done shots of tequila at University (I removed the obligatory “your mum” joke at the editor’s request). So, after a long day of fighting zombies, raiding and pillaging northern English towns (yes, there’s an Assassins Creed review coming), I finally logged on to Steam at about 18:00 tonight to give Flea a review. Reading through the spiel in the press release, I thought this game would be about as easy to play as the original Super Mario Game. After all, all I’d been told about it made me think it was going to be a cross between the latter game and Flappy Bird. Gamers, I was incredibly fucking wrong about that.
Allow me to address two gripes first, and then I’ll wax fucking lyrical about the gameplay and steep difficulty curve. Firstly, I should warn any Steam users that game on a Microsoft Surface Tablet NOT to put the game on Full screen, as for some reason, the launcher doesn’t like it, and you’ll end up swearing more profusely than your mother did at me this morning (yes, that’s the obligatory “your Mum” joke, are you happy now?). However, I’m told that this isn’t an issue with physical copies of the game, so if you have a NES player or an actual NES (you lucky bastards), then your fears will be allayed. The second gripe? While the music is awesome and a real nostalgic throwback, there seems to be no option to turn off the music and just have the sound effects, so the only way to focus on the sound is to have the music on.
The game is pretty easy to start off with, once you’ve checked your button mapping, and to be honest gamers, this lulled me into a false sense of security. I think this might have been Ally’s thoughts deliberately, because this game does not let up with the difficulty once you get cracking. On my first attempt at completing the just over 80 levels, I managed a measly level 16, despite the fact that the game gives you a rather generous 18 lives to start off with. If Ally and Lowtek Games ever want to develop a “hard setting”, I’d love to be able to watch speed runs of this game with only one life.
Soundtrack
This game wears its nostalgic heart on its sleeve, and the soundtrack to this is no exception. Whilst comparisons to Flappy Bird are inveitable for other aspects of this game, the soundtrack to this game is about as nostalgic as a DeLorean with a flux capacitor. . Seriously, this soundtrack is impressive in its inherent ability to give any retrogamers flashbacks to the late 1980s, but don’t expect anything more complicated than 8 bit soundtracks.
Playability
This is where the game truly comes into its own, dear gamers. From the moment you get to grips with the controls, which you can map to make life easier on yourself, to the moment where you finally complete the game, this game is one hell of a rollercoaster, with the humour firmly set in from the start. From the occasional bit of innuendo, to the final punchline, even if you’re frustrated by a very steep difficulty curve, I can guarantee that you’ll be laughing all the way to the end.
The joy in this game, however, will be watching gamers speed run this game as this game has one thing that a lot of its competitors don’t: replayability. During the course of playing this game for review purposes, I completed this game three times and honestly, I’ve had a lot of fun in the process of doing so.
The Verdict
Flea is a stunningly good independent game with a unique mechanic that is bound to make the retrogamer in us all smile and laugh our heads off whilst keeping the difficulty curve to make this game good for speed running. In my opinion, this game is good and addictive enough to be the next Super Meat Boy, and is also family friendly enough that both the dad and the kids in the family will want to play it. Also, it’s been the most fun I’ve had in reviewing a game for ages. So, go and give this game a go, and take yourself back to the time where games didn’t take themselves too seriously.
So, did you enjoy that review? Did I sell you this game, or am I just talking absolute bollocks? come and let me know either way. For now though, I’ve been Davey, and you guys have been AWESOME!
