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Y'know QWOP? Sure you do. Everyone knows QWOP. It made its presence known as a viral timewaster
on the scale of a
Bejeweled or a Nanaca Crash, and soon had folks around the world failing miserably and
falling all over the place. (I
myself could never get over that damned hurdle.) So we're at least familiar with the ridiculous
ragdoll mechanics that
made the game so intentionally unintentionally hilarious. Well, Incredipede tries to live
up to that strangeness, only
this time you're not a runner from some third-world country; you are... um... an eye. An eye on
a circular-looking thing,
with variable limbs and musculature. Kinda like Neemoi from the old Carmen Sandiego game
show, but on steroids.
The general gist is simple: collect fruit, headdresses, crystal skulls, melons, and other
strange objects by either
hitting them or pushing them to the right over a mystical glowing line of arbitraryness,
after which you yourself have
to get across that same line. But you're just an eye with strange and oftentimes counterintuitive
physical form; by
rotating your limbs and muscles one way or the other with the A and S keys, you have
to manage the course and not fall
off the world. Not that there's much of a penalty, though; you float, you can traverse
lava, and you're light enough
to be carried on a stiff enough breeze... oh yeah, and you've got infinite lives, effectively.
What you have to do is
more than just platforming; there's a strong puzzle aspect at play here as well, which
is apparent in the normal
difficulty but absolutely hammered home in the Hard mode.
Yes, you get to play Spore or something and actually build this little... um... thing...
however you see fit. Need a leg for
more stability? Make a leg. Need it to be functional as well as attractive? Attach a
muscle to it, so it can propel
you toward your goal. Not every course gives you full control over Quozzle's... yes, Quozzle's...
build; some start you
with some base parts and make you figure out a working muscle system. But most important
is the action itself, and
managing the swinging, poking, and rolling to... oh, not that way! Oh, Quozzle. Whatever
shall you do.
The music is minimalist, save for the occasional roving pack of didgeridoos, and the art style
feels very
woodblock-printish, like Okami without all that Japan crammed in there. There's a level
editor included, for really
putting Quozzle through her paces, and a recording system allows you to play back your most glorious
moments and share
them with the rest of the world. But the most interesting thing about Incredipede is its
achievements. There are only
six, and they're not unlocked by anything in the game. Instead, they advocate that you
actually go outside and find a
bug that you've never seen before, before returning and clicking the "I Did This" button.
I didn't have the heart to
break it to them that there aren't any spiders on the Intergalactic Space Arcade... at least
there aren't since last
Thursday when a spider fell onto my burrito and it and all its kind were made to pay the
dearest price. We got geese,
though.