This short, cute, low-poly platformer with some creepy touches was a true joy!

This is part of the collaboration between Sebastian Küpper (Diplodocus) and Marcus Horn (Siactro). It’s Horn’s game, part of his oeuvre exploring retro-style low-poly 3D homages and cutesy horror as also seen in Tasty Ramen; Küpper did some level design and also ported it to console. I was pleased to see that the port has been getting updates, including fixing initially reported bugs and adding features that the PC version had as of its latest update 7 weeks ago.

The game is just lovely; a score/time-challenge 3D platformer through adorable little obstacle courses. Toree—a baby chicken in trainers with round glasses and a backpack—controls like a dream, with a cute run animation, a double-jump, and just a little bit of skidding. You’ll be collecting stars and trying for a good time through a glorious pink cityscape, a Snowboard Kids-esque ice world, a perhaps Sonic-inspired industrial ocean platform, and a moody cyber-highway. Each has two levels, for a total of eight, plus an extra mashup level where aspects of all are mixed and twisted.

I mentioned some creepiness; a demo for this game also appeared on the collaborative indie project “Haunted PS1 demo disc”. Indeed there are moments that feel like you’re playing a creepypasta, where an angel of death takes your ice cream away, you can see the game code through a tear in space, or a big star with a happy smile glitches, the cheery music becomes a distorted drone, and the now empty-eyed grimacing star starts to approach you… the jumpscaring snowballs with big teeth are a more traditional spook, but the Eversion-like undermining creeps and bleeps are effective given the extreme cutesiness most of the time.

Horn also included unlockable characters from his other games. Get all the stars and you can play as Macbat, who can fly freely. Get A-rank times all over and you can play as a happy little bowl of ramen from the in-development Tasty Ramen who runs faster. These are nice little surprises that tie the Siactro universe together and a nice bonus for mastering the stages.

And that’s it! It’s short, but for US$1 well worth the price. Not much more to say… check out Siactro’s other games while you’re at it!