Frogmind is a small studio, that is comprised of two developers, and their debut game titled Badland is a great fun overall experience. When I first came upon this game at the Google Play Store, I thought that is would be an World of Goo rip off or something, but I decided to download the game onto my Android device, and much to my dismay, I found myself playing this game for hours.
Badland is a floater style side scroller game, with the black character images much like World of Goo, and with tap to fly gameplay (Jetpack Joyride). After you have downloaded this game and play it for the first time you will easily get lost in Badland's beautiful lushly-drawn world.
When you first start the game, you are controlling a round fuzzy-looking bat like creature, flying though a forest. There is not much a story, nor is there any narrative to be found in the game, but there is strong tonal plot told through the gorgeous scenery. As you flap through levels at dawn, noon, dusk, and night the forest takes on beautifully mysterious quality tinged with the foreboding of machinery encroaching on the natural world.
I love how simple the controls are in this game, your bat-like creature will fly as you touch the screen, and will descend when you let go, and if you tap your screen, the bat will flap its wings. But just because the controls are simple does not mean that the game is simple though, you will have to navigate through, tight corridors, and will have to do some environmental physics puzzles.A wide range of item pickups litter the levels. What is brilliant is that every item works on a matter of scale, and has an equal and opposite counterpart. For example, there is a pickup that makes your bat shrink, and the more of them you collect the smaller your bat becomes. There is also one that makes you grow, and it acts on the same principle. None of the pickups work on a timer, so the only way to undo their effect is to collect their opposite. This leads to some very creative level design as later pickups add abilities like sticking to or bouncing off of walls and a spinning effect that essentially turns the bat into a rolling ball.
The one item that does not scale is cloning, which comes in versions that either spawn just one more bat or a whole swarm. Navigating a swarm of bats around corners and past spinning saw blades is no easy task, but satisfying if you can manage to emerge on the other side with more than one survivor.
The level design in Badland is also quite interesting. The 40 levels are all carefully created rather than procedurally generated, and alternate between predominantly clever puzzles and the occasional chaotic mad dashes to the exit. The latter may be off-putting to many since they generally throw in all of the pickups at once, resulting in giant bouncy bats barreling at full speed as you tap and pray. The mad dash levels seem like an inclusion from a console design mentality, where they would act as a cathartic release of tension during extended play sessions. They still accomplish that effect here, but aren't as necessary since most players will likely tackle the game in short bursts of one or two levels at a time. At the very least, seeing the cacophony of abilities together highlights the clever restraint Frogmind used when building the puzzle levels.
The game also has a multiplayer feature, that will let you connect with four other players, and your goal is simple; compete to fly the furthest. Yeah that's it, not much goes on in the multiplayer mode, and I found this mode to be useless.Goodland…..er I mean Badland is a fun, addictive, and very clever game to play, there are minor issues here and there, but game's Pros easily overshadow them. Badland is available free at the Google Play Store.
