It’s hard to pull off something “unique” in the world of casual mobile games, but Part Time Monkey has actually accomplished it with their newly released Silly Walks game. When you open Silly Walks , the first thing you’ll notice is this crazy amazing animation style that reminds me of something out of a Pixar movie, with jaunty music to boot.
You begin the game as a tiny pineapple dude that has been carved into a tropical drink holder -- but with arms and legs. The location of the game is a kitchen and your task is to rescue an imprisoned group of fruity friends. Why they’ve been caged in the kitchen is completely unexplained, but hey, with “silly” in the title, do you even have to explain?
In order to rescue your friends, you are given a set of mission goals, which include things like knocking over cups or smashing sugar cubes as you make your way in the direction of you friends. Your character has two modes of movement: walking and dashing. To walk, you must tap the screen which changes your pineapple man from balancing on one foot to the other. As you balance, you also rotate slowly, so you have to time when to switch feet in order to make any forward progress. This might seem simple enough but it’s actually a lot more complicated than it sounds. During stretches where walking gets a little tedious, you can swipe in a given direction to dash, but your dash move builds up over time so you can’t do it very often. You also have to be careful about when and where you dash because, if you knock yourself off the table or other surface you are on, the game ends.
As you pass various levels, you unlock new missions with some pretty zany obstacles. For instance, in one case you have a red hot griddle laying across your path and you must make your way to the electrical socket first to unplug it and survive the journey to rescue your friends. Or other times a menacing meat mallet is slamming down on the counter and you have to dash ahead to avoid certain death. The deeper you get into the missions , , the harder it becomes to rescue your friends, because some pretty terrifying kitchen monsters start revealing themselves. I mean, who ever thought a group of kitchen knives would attach themselves to a spaghetti pot and turn into the ultimate rolling death machine?
A real treat inside the game are the miniature cartoon-like cutscenes that arise to introduce new perils or pieces to the story. I’m typically a cutscene skipper, but the scenes in Silly Walks have been so thoughtfully designed that they can’t be described as anything other than delightful. The game also includes a collectables element, in that as you gather sugar cubes, you can use them to unlock a wide array of silly walking characters like a popcorn box, pancake stack or slice of pepperoni pizza.
Silly Walks is available now on the Apple App Store. For a free-to-play offering, this one is well worth checking out.
