Mash-ups can often be quite fun. Most of us are aware of the idea of ‘elevator pitching’ an idea by sticking familiar things together to suggest something new, usually with extra description to underline what the idea’s unique selling point is. Toricky can therefore be describe as “Angry Birds meets Flappy Bird in a retro 90’s chic sort of way.”
If this sounds exciting, we have some bad news for you; the game has decided to take all the worst aspects of those concepts and bundle them into one terrible idea. The game does have a plot. You control Toricky, who, along with their friend Momo, get knocked out of their airship onto a mysterious island. Luckily, Torikcy is a parrot with flying goggles, so they don’t plummet to their doom. The hapless bird then flaps around the island, picking up fruit, boxes and ‘crystars’ whilst avoiding pirates.
The pirates are, of course, pigs. (Later on you’ll encounter sharks and other creatures, but let’s focus on the pigs for now. It doesn’t really matter as all the enemies are pretty much the same.) They’re easily defeated by picking up and dropping boxes on them. Or at least they would be if the controls were even slightly responsive. The problem is that unlike Flappy Bird, Toricky’s movement is made unpredictable by the games lack of precision. As this platformer is a maze-like game, this is very annoying. You’re constantly bumping the daft parrot into walls and traps.
There are countless minor irritations as well. The initial cut-scene (which adds nothing to the game) is unskippable, and is literally the main character and their support chatting about nothing until they get knocked onto the island. The dialogue is atrocious, the plot boring.
The soundtrack is similarly bland and derivative. This is unsurprising given that it’s clearly a deliberate homage to 90’s style adventure video games. The problem is that it’s either a little bit too repetitive to be ignored or so nondescript that it adds nothing to the gaming experience. In many ways the soundtrack is perfect for the game, but that’s not a good thing. Coupled with the games other frustrations and you’d be hard pushed to find any fun at all.
The game has been patched recently, but we suspect that at this point nothing short of an entirely new game could save it. It’s a boring unoriginal idea that got turned into a boring and unoriginal game.
TORICKY / DEVELOPER: STRANGE BULL / PLATFORM: STEAM / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
