4cr Review – Critter Crunch

Of all the reasons you have not to read videogame reviews, the consistent use of words like fresh, unique, and original often make the top of most complaint lists I’ve heard. Like other creative mediums, new releases obviously take inspiration from everything that preceded their arrival – from all mediums – and how that gets remixed and served to gamers determines how tempted we might be to use any of those bad words to describe the results.

Puzzle games probably demonstrate this more than any other genre, by nature of their straight forward objectives they tend to show more obvious roots. There’s also a metric tonne of puzzle games constantly releasing that aren’t very proactive about separating themselves from the heap. I’ve rarely reviewed anything close to a puzzle game, but Capybara’s Critter Crunch is one I’ve been waiting for during its evolution from the iPhone to PSN, and I want to insist up and down this page that while you can see the roots, the game is something fresh, and yes, I’ll even say special – more so than any other offering to the genre in recent memory.

Beyond the addictive qualities, personality and outright design effort go a long way toward backing up that statement. And if that doesn’t do it for you, then I’ll add that Critter Crunch is the only game that encourages players to vomit rainbows – this alone must compel you to read on!

Critter Crunch encourages exploring the food chain, by participating directly in the process – literally chaining critters together as food. Players take on the role of Biggs on his native island of Krunchatoa. The character design alone is enough of a draw to bring players in for a taste. Biggs is a sort of big, fuzzy, birdlike, ball of happy? Okay, I don’t know how to describe him, I just saw him and had an instinctual need to hug him.

Since it helps to see the game in motion, I recommend checking out the launch trailer.

Anyway, the idea behind the game is all about feeding critters to other critters, which produces the crystals that Biggs wants to eat. Critters come in three sizes, requiring players to feed smaller critters to the next size up, with any critter that eats two smaller critters exploding and dropping one of those precious crystals. It’s a very simple and addictive concept, with room aplenty for layers to be added, which Capybara does, creating a game that’s easy to fall into but challenging to master – the ideal of any puzzle game.

From here it all goes up a continual series of notches. For instance, you can feed two small critters to a medium-sized one to cause it to explode – or feed a small critter to a medium-sized critter and then feed that to a larger critter. Then comes the foodchain bonus, which occurs whenever you feed a small critter to a medium-sized critter that has a large critter behind it, causing the large one to instinctively gobble it up – still with me? An exploding critter will also explode any critter of the same size and color immediately touching it.

All of these critters are descending in columns along a string of vines, the player’s goal to fill the hunger gauge before any of them reach the bottom – at which point the critters are very proactive about beating Biggs senseless behind a cloud of dust.

As with any good puzzle game, the more you chain the more you gain, point-wise. Eliminating eight or more creatures at once will often give you an opportunity to try one of the games more unique bonus features – feeding Biggs’ son by holding down the circle button to vomit rainbows into his mouth. I’m ridiculously happy about getting to write that.

Where as most puzzle games have a story mode that makes a half-assed attempt to string together a reason for each new stage, Critter Crunch is setup as a documentary of sorts, with players being guided by an explorer studying the rich eco-system of the island. A map of the island shows Biggs’ progression through stages that continually raise the challenges and options while unlocking new modes. Additional elements include bomb critters that can clear trouble spots, food bonuses that allow Biggs to fire a limited amount of projectiles, and toxic critters that can drain Biggs’ hunger gauge.

The two additional modes that are quickly unlocked are puzzle and challenge, one requiring the player to clear a stage with a limited set of moves, and the other presenting challenges to clearing a stage with set conditions – such as doing so without setting off any foodchains. These added modes offer an equal share of delight and frustration, but whichever side of that you fall on, it’s hard to deny that there’s an incredible amount of critters to be crunched for all of $6.99 – how often do I mention pricing?

Not resting there, the game also offers both competitive and co-operative multiplayer modes to keep players going after the island tour has ended – with a keen eye to appreciating how much I enjoy puzzle games that allot me bonuses that punish my opponent.

The devil is also in the small details, which prove devilishly attractive. Simply put, there’s a lot of love crammed into making the game pop with more life than your average puzzler would know what to do with. The animations of Biggs, both on stages and the map, the critters themselves, and even the writing and background designs, it all leaves me thinking that this is the kind of game I might expect from Sony’s internal Japanese development – which is my way of saying that Capybara has just straight-up outdone themselves, and made their first PSN outing a distinct mark separating them from any competitors.

That’s a horribly enthusiastic statement to be sure, but it’s also true. Critter Crunch is absolutely the type of game that is going to become synonymous with the highest quality titles PSN offers. It fits quite snugly with a number of smaller, refreshing attempts at game design, that are making PSN more of a draw for potential PS3 ownership that many of those large-scale, big budget retail releases we’re always waiting for.

Critter Crunch
Capybara Games
PlayStation 3 (Playstation Network)
October 8, 2009