Escape Doodland
Title: Escape
Developer: Sonka
Publisher: Qubic Games
Website: https://www.escapedoodland.com
Genre: Action, Adventure, Platformer.
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Audience: Rated 7 – crude humour, mild fantasy, violence.
Release Date: 30/11/2018
What the Developers say
Discover a unique hand-drawing art style, humorous characters and a variety of fun gameplay mechanics.
THE WORLD
Doodland is a grotesque world created on a piece of paper. It is invaded by Omnomus, a cruel monster that loves the taste of inhabitants of this land. Each part of the world has a unique atmosphere. You will have to run, jump, swim and fly to overcome many demanding obstacles.
DOODLERS
Doodlers are peaceful and brave creatures living in Doodland, choose which one you will help to escape. There are no two same Doodlers. Each of them looks different and sounds different, but every one of them has one common feature – digestive problems.
BOOSTERS
Omnomus has no mercy. If you are on reach, he will eat you without blinking an eye. Fortunately Doodlers can use their gastric problems against him:
Just find a match, light your fart and feel the boost.
And if this won’t help, just release stinky gases in his face to stun him. This is your last resort.
Introduction
After trawling the Nintendo Eshop for a little while, I came across this little beauty. Its fun, quirky art style instantly drew me into it, and after watching the trailer, I just knew I had to play it. The idea of the game, in essence, is straightforward, you have to time jumps and farts to escape a monster called the Omnomus. On paper, it sounds easy, but in practice, it’s a very different beast entirely, read on to learn more.
Looks and Sounds
So after playing for a fair few hours how do I feel it holds up; well the gameplay is solid with no lag/screen tears etc. It does seem to run the same both docked and handheld with no apparent upscaling.
I particularly loved the music and sound effects in this game from the main protagonist Steve yelling “No!No!No!” Every time that Omnomus got to close to the gaseous noises of the three farts you can perform. The music was a crescendo of fast rhythmic music to slow dulcet tones as the game progressed to the more water based levels, but all in I enjoyed it – I usually play games on really low volume or not at all, but I kept this at quite a high level for the duration of this title.
I liked the art style in the game with the background being busy at times. Also, the Omnomus wearing level relative garments made me chuckle, and it felt like the developer had thought of everything.
Gameplay and Replayability
The gameplay was fun fast frantic and at times a little frustrating but I thoroughly enjoyed myself with this title. Having not played an endless runner on the Switch before, I’m pleased I chose this one, it feels right at home. To escape the Omnomus you have a myriad of different gaseous weapons of choice, and you can collect boxes of matches to be able to propel yourself forwards, upwards, and you also have the ability to stop the beast in his tracks.
After getting used to how the farts mechanism worked and getting used to the double jumps/climbing/swimming the game quickly starts to become very fun, and I spent most of my time revisiting levels to collect the golden beans.
Each level has green beans you can collect that equates to a total number of golden ones at the end of the level, these, in turn, unlock power-ups and new creatures you can play as.
They don’t have too much of an effect on the game as it’s still reasonably achievable to complete it just using Steve and one or two power-ups. The game’s difficulty can get frustrating at times though, and I felt myself having to put my Switch down at times so that I didn’t break it over my knee.
You can choose hard or harder with the latter receiving no help from any checkpoints and having to clear the level in one run hence how it got tough later on in the levels, but I managed to achieve what I thought was the impossible and cleared the game after a few hours.
Conclusion
So after playing this title for a fair few hours, I would recommend purchasing it. I feel it would appeal to younger children who find gaseous fart noises hilarious and entertaining. However, fans of endless runners should enjoy this game. Unfortunately, it doesn’t bring anything new to the table, but for the price, it’s worth a punt.
Also, if you’re a fan of collecting every unlockable, there’s a fair few to unlock in this title. I give this title a solid 3.5 out of 5 just because of the difficulty scaling mainly some players might give up or not finish because of this reason.
Rapid Reviews UK Rating
You can purchase Escape
