Game Review: Offspring Fling!
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“I can’t keep playing this game.”
Normally, people say such a thing about a game that is boring or otherwise non-enjoyable. Offspring Fling! is a great game, and a must-play if you enjoyed Super Meat Boy, VVVVV, or (especially) Blocks That Matter. But I can’t keep playing it. I beat all 100 normal endings, and got a disappointing ending which practically says “you need to get par times on every level for a better ending” without spelling it out like some games do. So I try to get the par times on every level. It was smooth sailing.
Then I hit the 30th level. “Danger Below.” This level has an incredibly difficult par time, IF you do it the normal way. I cheated. I’ll show you how someday!
I noticed that this game has some issues (at least on my PC). Major performance issues that I normally don’t get on games since I upgraded by graphics card. Then again, I see weird stuff all the time on this computer (like Facebook’s main page soft-locking my computer for upwards of a minute). I probably need to re-install Windows at some point.
After level 30, it was smooth sailing again with easily-obtained par times.
Then I hit the 65th level. “Going Down.” Here, I noticed a very weird problem with the game. In this particular level, you have to fling your offspring at a platform. Once the platform has 3 offspring on it, it starts to go down. Depending on how I threw the offspring, this platform went down at different speeds. The way I was doing it, the platform was going down way too slow for par times. I repeated the actions of a walkthrough that I found online and found that the platform was much faster!
Everything went smoothly until level 73. “The Flow.” That’s where I gave up.
The par-time on this level is exceptionally difficult. It requires you to exploit a physics bug where hopping in a narrow hallway causes your character (Mamma) to move faster. Exploiting this bug requires rapidly pressing the jump button. The devs know about this exploit (it’s in a ‘ghost replay’ of the first level), and it seems required for level 73’s par-time. Apparently, I can’t do this fast enough for the incredibly long hallway in level 73.
I’ll try again later (because Offspring Fling! is a great game), but for now, I can’t keep playing it.