Silly Walks is, without a doubt, one of the most adorable games that has come out for mobile in recent times. It’s a super cute cartoon adventure that’s all about leading items of food through a series of challenges. But …
Silly Walks is, without a doubt, one of the most adorable games that has come out for mobile in recent times. It’s a super cute cartoon adventure that’s all about leading items of food through a series of challenges.
But for all of its cuteness and simple controls, there’s actually a pretty wonderful game here as well. It’s challenging when it needs to be, and it’s threaded through with enough new ideas to keep you interested as you play.
Plus it’s almost impossible not to grin when a podgy hotdog with wiggly legs is wandering around, collecting sugar cubes, and trying not to get shot off the kitchen counter by an angry toaster.
The game is set across a number of different levels. They’re all reasonably short, but they offer up three challenges each. You can get to the end and free your caged foody friends, but there’s more to the game than just doing that.
There are sugar cubes to collect for starters. These are the game’s currency, and you can spend them on continues when things go wrong, or save them up to buy new characters. Sometimes you’ll need to push over cups and cans, other times you’ll need to deal with rogue appliances.
There’s the aforementioned toaster, but it’s not the only thing out to get you. Hob rings fire up, literally, tenderising hammers try and mash you to bits, and razor sharp knives attempt to slice you into little chunks. All of these are things that you don’t want to happen.
But everything is handled with a neat, light touch. The controls are brilliantly simple. You pivot around on one of your legs, tap the screen and you’ll switch to the other. Keep tapping and you’ll start walking. Stop tapping and you’ll just spin around on one leg.
It’s an ingenious way of doing things. Later you’ll get a dash move as well. This lets you shoot in one direction for a short time. It’s on a recharge, but it’s pretty quick, and if you’d prefer you can pay a bit of real-life cash to unlock unlimited dashes.
It’s the levels that are the real stars here though. One sees a room filling up with water, making you abandon your usual caution to try and get to a shut off valve before you drown. Another has a waffle iron in it. Which is nice.
Silly Walks does just about everything you’d want from a simple arcade adventure. There’s more depth here than you’re usual one-touch experience, but never enough that you feel flustered or put upon. Put this down for a week and you’ll still know exactly what you need to do when you pick it up again.
There’s enough going on that even players who normally turn their noses up at simplified touchscreen gaming are going to be hard pressed to really find anything to complain about. Silly Walks does what it does with such heart, such aplomb, that it’s sort of difficult to get mad at it.
This is a charming, sometimes enchanting, way to spend some of your time. It’s not going to stick in the memory for very long, but it’s still a fresh and entertaining slice of pocket-sized gaming that’s going to paint a broad smile squarely in the mouth region of your face.
