Adventures of Shuggy Review (PC)

It’s that time again, the time that comes around once every fortnight! It’s time for yet another Indie Royale Bundle Review! This time around I’m trying out a bit of a different format to see if I can improve my formula for bundle reviews, so bear with me.

Adventures of Shuggy is a 2D platformer game that was developed by Smudged Cat Games and is available for Windows only, via a DRM free download or through the use of the Steam or Desura keys provided with your bundle purchase.

There’s over 100 levels to choose from throughout the course of the game, it also supports Steam achievements, if you care about that sort of thing. The way they’ve got the game structured, you are told the basics of the story via a comic at the beginning of your experience. Basically, you are Shuggy, a cartoon vampire who is on his way to inherit a castle that he was left in the will of a family member that was recently deceased. Of course, it also says that it’s haunted, but that’s not stopping Shuggy. Upon entering, you encounter a ton of steam (it’s quite hot inside) and Shuggy guesses that it’s the boiler room causing the issue. You then have to complete eight levels successfully to acquire eight keys, which will then get you into the boiler room. You’re given another comic to read about what happens, and then taken to another level selection area, with a fresh set of levels.

The art style of the game is very nice and quite unique, it’s quite a joy to look at while you’re playing. Each set of levels has its own style, which is quite interesting. The game doesn’t offer any sort of resolution options which is disappointing, but to be fair it mostly fit my screen, it must’ve been running in a resolution around 1280×720, which isn’t bad but isn’t the best either. To be fair it does offer windowed and fullscreen modes, but that doesn’t really cut it as some people would like to be able to adjust the resolution the game runs in for better performance, so it’d fit their screen, etc.

The soundtrack is decent, not the best thing I’ve ever heard but certainly not the worst either. For the most part it wasn’t really noticeable, which isn’t necessarily a good thing. It may have been just a bit quiet, but I think that the reason I didn’t notice it much was because it wasn’t anything absolutely amazing, unlike some other soundtracks I’ve heard.

As for gameplay, well, the game has a lot of variety to it. Each level (so far at least) has been reasonably unique, and they’ve been able to do quite a lot with such a simple set of controls. You basically just move around with the WASD keys, use the spacebar to jump and use the “action button” by pressing the enter key, which does something different in every level. In some levels, you have to just collect all of the gems while avoiding the enemies. In others, you’ll have to herd Shmus to a specific spot, and in yet others still the action button will rotate the level meaning that you can get to places you wouldn’t have been able to before, which is pretty neat. In fact, there was even a level where I had to stand on a switch holding a door open, so that the future version of me would be able to get through, which was absolutely fantastic to see.

Needless to say, if you’re looking for variety, then this is the game for you. There’s a different way to play in just about every level, or at least some extension or modification to how you use a technique that you already know. For example, the first level I did where I rotated it, I was rotating it so I could move around and access things I couldn’t before. However, another level that was an extension on that feature needed me to rotate the map so I could bring the gems to me, which was pretty neat to do.

Before I go any further though, I’d like to mention the issues that I have with this game, one at a time so that you’re aware of the flaws that this adventure carries with it. First of all, the controls feel loose. And when I say loose, I mean it. When I run and jump, It’s almost as if I slide, which can be really infuriating on those levels when you’re required to be more precise with your movements. The game would’ve been nicer to play if the controls were tighter, as that way you’d have more control and be able to complete the levels more easily.

The second of two problems that I have with the game is that there is (on my setup anyway) a terrible crashing problem that occurs whenever the game is in fullscreen mode, is minimized and then is maximized again. The game crashes right after I do that, which is, again, infuriating as all I was doing was taking a screenshot then saving it and maximizing the game again, but it crashed every time which sucked.

Other than that though, the game was great. And guess what! When you buy the Adventures of Shuggy through the Indie Royale, you also get the soundtrack in .mp3 format and the comic, which are some awesome extras. And at the low, low fluctuating price of $5.22, why wouldn’t you at least give this game a shot? It costs less than it does to eat at a fast food restaurant, so what do you really have to lose?