At some time or another, all of us fantasize about stripping naked, jumping into a birthday cake the size of a bungalow, and then eating our way out. But cake-dives typically don’t work out in real life: Aside from running the risk of being pulled in for public indecency, chances are good that you’d manage maybe ten mouthfuls of cake before your stomach started violently (and messily) rejecting all that frosting. Leave the reckless eating to the Morps, the tubby stars of the adorable town building/action game Eat Eat Hooray!
At some time or another, all of us fantasize about stripping naked, jumping into a birthday cake the size of a bungalow, and then eating our way out. But cake-dives typically don’t work out in real life: Aside from running the risk of being pulled in for public indecency, chances are good that you’d manage maybe ten mouthfuls of cake before your stomach started violently (and messily) rejecting all that frosting. Leave the reckless eating to the Morps, the tubby stars of the adorable town building/action game Eat Eat Hooray!
You play through Eat Eat Hooray! as the sole Morp to survive an attack by the dinosaur wizard Rexputin. Rexputin cages your Morp friends and buries them deep in underground labyrinths. Incidentally, Rexputin wields a crooked wand and sports a fake beard as well as stars on his butt. He has issues about being taken seriously. Can’t imagine why.
If you want to save your Morp friends, you need to build, and more importantly, you need to eat. As it so happens, both jobs go hand-in-hand. Your first order of business is to build a portal to one of the underground lairs wherein Rexputin is holding a handful of your pals. Your second task is to build “eateries” that produce the food you need to go on these expeditions. Can’t be a hero on an empty stomach.
It’s interesting that you need to fuel your rescue missions with food, since your Morp avatar’s specialty is eating everything—and that includes the very ground that your Morp village is built on. Whenever you enter a portal (which is only possible when your eateries have produced the necessary amount of food), you’re transported to a subterranean world that your Morp pal shovels through by way of his huge mouth and bottomless stomach. You only have a certain amount of time in the portal, so you need to navigate through the brave new world quickly and efficiently in order to find your friends as well as coins and building materials that can go back into expanding the Morp village.
You control your Morp’s digging by sliding your finger in the direction you want him to munch. Unfortunately, the swipe-based controls prove to be a bit of a problem: If you’re not careful, you’ll wind up queuing a bunch of movements you had no intention of making, meaning you’ll go marching up and down tunnels you already dug, not to mention straight into objects like rocks and bones, which take extra time to chew and swallow. Time is precious when you’re underground, and every second counts. It helps to flick your finger and move space-by-space instead of dragging it, like the game advises.
Moreover, Eat Eat Hooray! is a freemium game, so you can expect a fair amount of waiting around if you want to collect enough food, materials, and money to progress. Thankfully, the game is pretty generous about handing out hard currency, so you can buy several shortcuts without spending an actual dime.
The combination of exploration and building meshes well in Eat Eat Hooray! and gives the game a good deal of personality and character. Young players will love the chubby Morps and the dastardly Rexputin, while the rest of us will simply love the idea of eating miles of cake. Reminder: Eating miles of cake in real life comes with awful, awful consequences. Don’t try it at home.
