Misadventures of Fludd

Flipper

DSiWare

Developer/Publisher:  GoodByeGalaxyGames/Xform

ESRB Rating: E for Everyone

Price: 500 Nintendo Points on the DSiWare Shop

Fun Fact: The developer is an amazing team of 1!

Flipper tells a very simple tale of a boy and his quest to save his titular goldfish, Flipper from the evil intentions of ghosts, pirates and robots. Simple as that sounds, don’t let it fool you: Flipper is definitely one of the most charming and unique games on the service.

On your quest to save Flipper, you take control over the Boy on a 3D map. Using your stylus, you’ll have to lead the boy to Flipper to complete a level. However, the environment is not your friend here, with broken bridges, landmasses and enemies keeping you away from you beloved pet.  This is where the game comes in, giving you tokens which you can pick up to give yourself abilities such as blasting away land, reform broken land/bridges and even add little pieces of land.  You use all of these to help you solve the puzzle of how to get to your goldfish, with the game awarding you more points the less tokens you use.

Only you can save Flipper by blowing land up!

The game is fully controlled via the touch screen, with some buttons optionally used as shortcuts. (D-Pad to move around the camera, holding L to activate powers, etc) These work well in the games favor, so any failures is on you and you alone. The game takes you around 4 worlds as you journey to save  your goldfish, each world with a unique theme. The game’s charm really shows here, especially with each world’s music theme. The tunes in this game are really fantastic, as well as some of the spritework for the boy and the baddies. Each world contains 4 normal levels, a bonus level and a unlockable star level when you collect all the hidden stars in each world. (Adding an extra goal to look for while in stages) All this adds up to 24 fun levels in this 3D Puzzle Platformer.

Hidden Stars can mostly only be found by making good use of your powers.

Flipper’s premise may not be the most exciting thing ever, but it proves that not everything has to try to be epic in order to fun. It’s definitely a game I recommend to any DSi owner looking for something new, especially those into puzzles with multiple solutions — which this game is chock-full of.

+ Great charm & music.

+ Controls work great, and the shortcuts are appreciated.

+ Multiple solutions and hidden stars push creativity and add challenge.

- It’s a little on the short side

Flipper was purchased from the DSiWare Store and played to 100% completion, grabbing all of the hidden stars and replaying some levels to get higher scores.

Dark Void Zero

DSiWare

Developer/Publisher:  Other Ocean/Capcom

ESRB Rating: E for Everyone

Price: 500 Nintendo Points on the Nintendo DSiWare Shop

You’ve got to hand it to Capcom. They sure know how handle retro games, be it remakes (Bionic Commando Rearmed) or brand new affairs (Megaman 9), It’ll be high quality stuff. Their newest retro based game, Dark Void Zero does not disrupt that fact.

You can tell Capcom spent alot of time on this game simply on all the backstory they created for the game. From dual screened arcade cabinets to Jimmy Fallon (Seriously!), the “history” of Dark Void Zero is definitely something fun to read up on.  You can start off here at Capcom Unity.

However, is all this marketing hype simply hiding a lame attempt at promoting the release of Dark Void on the 360 and PS3? After a great game session, I’m going to have to say no!

Oh, Capcom!

As soon as you boot it up, Dark Void Zero tosses retro charm in your face. As seen above, you actually have to blow into the DSi’s microphone to get to the game’s main menu. (Of course if you’re in public and prefer not to do so, you can simply press A) You are greeted with fantastic bitmusic from Bear McCreary  (Battlestar Galactica) and a simple menu. Select your difficulty and start up the game by learning about the backstory of Earth’s struggle with the Watchers, an alien race trying to create a stable portal to invade Earth fullforce.

Hover & Kill

Teaming up with the brilliant scientist Nikolai Tesla, you take control of Rusty and jet pack your way into facilities, stealing keycards and shooting badguys. The top screen gives you a metriodvania-type map, while the touch screen houses all of the gameplay. Using the map, you must run, gun and hover towards objectives that Nikolai sets out for you. Simple controls and clear settings make for great handling in this plataformer/shooter.

Decent enemy and weapon/item variety ensures that things don’t get stale and secondary objectives such as finding old captain’s logs and eliminating enemy scientists give you reason to explore every nook and cranny of the map. Doing this all while fantastic bitmusic plays proves to be one of the most fun and polished experiences on DSiWare. However, it’s because of all this that it’s one flaw becomes incredibly apparent. It ends too soon.

Dark Void Zero only has 3 levels. Why must something so fun, end so quickly? Sure, you can replay the game on higher difficulty settings (Easy, Normal & Hard) and try to best your highscore, but I still would have liked to see some more of Rusty’s adventures in the void.

Overall, I would recommend Dark Void Zero to those who want a good quick (maybe too quick) action game during commute or to those already crazy with the Dark Void universe.  (That was early!) Capcom, I hope you continue working on projects like this, making retro styled games in line with your big console releases. Make Lost Planet Zero happen!

+Incredibly fun & polished

+GREAT MUSIC

=You fight the same boss over the 3 levels, albeit with improvements.

-It’s short.

-Did I mention it’s short?