Game Reviews

Incredipede

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| Incredipede
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Incredipede
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| Incredipede

Incredipede is a unique game, and for that alone it should be championed among the mangle of clones and copycats that lurk in every corner of the App Store.

But originality isn't enough to warrant the highest praise, and while Incredipede does forge its own path it's an occasionally frustrating and obtuse game where success comes through trial-and-error rather than skill.

There's a lot to like here, but the affection you feel towards Incredipede's strange visual style and bizarre setting is occasionally cancelled out by a particularly tough puzzle.

Crawl

The game is all about leading a monster past a glowing golden line. You control the creature's muscles, tensing and releasing by pushing and tapping different coloured buttons. The creature you're moving is a mass of spindly legs and tendons, each affected differently by your inputs.

There's a good chunk of weird running sim QWOP here, and a sprinkling of console motocross-balancer Trials as well. Undulating terrain means you need to consider each swing of a gangly limb, and flipping upside down is sometimes a better idea than trying the right way round.

Each of the levels in Normal mode has some fruit for you to collect, and you'll need to grab a set amount to make it to the next world. Some of these are easy to pick up, while others require intricate, complex, and precise movements to grab them.

It doesn't take long to work out what you need to do to complete a level with all the fruit, but actually getting your monster to twist and bend in the right direction can take a lot of doing.

It can grate to watch a melon fall into an irretrievable position over and over, and some people will probably give up rather than persevere.

Muscular

That's a shame, because Incredipede has some brilliant ideas and intriguing levels that reward persistence. Building your own beasts and levels adds an extra layer of content, and watching your own monstrous contraptions complete the harder levels is a great feeling.

Incredipede isn't a perfect game, then, but it's entertaining when it gets things right - something it does more often than not. This is a strange, at times frustrating, but always innovative physics-puzzler that just about earns its place in your collection.

Incredipede

A twisted and engaging puzzler with a few frustrating sections, Incredipede is - on balance - still worth your time
Score
Harry Slater
Harry Slater
Harry used to be really good at Snake on the Nokia 5110. Apparently though, digital snake wrangling isn't a proper job, so now he writes words about games instead.