Hands-on with Fancy Pants HD for iPad

Indie developer Borne Games found a hit with its first and only series, Fancy Pants Adventures - a big, cartoony love letter to old skool platformers.

Chillingo scooped up the franchise and now Fancy Pants HD for iPad brings the original game with crisper graphics and, of course, touchscreen controls.

The game stars Fancy Pants, a little guy who has to save his sister, Cutie Pants, from rambunctious pirates. An ode to the classics, Fancy Pants HD features our crudely drawn hero running, flipping, and fighting his way through an animated world. You guide him through the levels using a virtual D-pad and buttons.

The first thing we noticed during our recent hands-on with the game is that movement is incredibly intuitive. Run and jump towards a wall and you’ll start doing a triple-jump. Dash into a loop and you’ll soar around it like Sonic. Fancy Pants HD borrows from the greats.

It's also strangely surreal. In place of traditional coins, for instance, are squiggly, nervous-looking lines, and enemies are oddly drawn black figures that look like crabs. The whole game has an odd hand-drawn aesthetic.

Underneath the unusual style, the controls are tight. Within seconds we were able to do tricky jumps to hard-to-reach areas, disable dangerous enemies with head bounces, and collect bonus items with swift manoeuvres.

The solid controls are a good thing, too, as the game moves fast. Like Sonic, there were some areas that we blazed by within a few seconds. It is good to see that the port is taking full advantage of the iPad’s power.

You can check it out yourself when Fancy Pants HD arrives on the iPad in January.