Developer: Zoink!
Publisher: Ripstone
Rrp: £10.99
Released: 13th December 2013
Available on Steam, and gog.com
Welcome to Stick It to the Man! A game where you use stickers to manipulate the world around you. To me this game feels like a spiritual successor to Double Fine’s Psychonauts (of which I did a review here). It’s filled with humour and the writing is off the wall but extremely good.
One thing I have to say is this has one of the best title songs I have ever come across, that being ‘Just Dropped In’ by Kenny Rogers. When that song came on I just let it play through to the end and enjoyed every second.
In Stick It to the Man you play a day in the life of Ray, admittedly it’s a very long and strange day, but a day none the less.
There are two main mechanics at work within this game. One is the ability to read minds, and the other is the ability to apply and remove stickers, which will cause events to happen.
The first ability as it suggests lets you listen in to the thoughts of characters around you. There is a reason for doing this, by reading the characters mind you can find out what they need in order for you to progress or in some cases what they can give you to use on someone else. The second ability is used in conjunction with this and allows you to apply or remove a stick from or to their thoughts.
This game is a puzzle platformer and the puzzles are solved by using a sticker that you have collect in certain situations. For example, to set off a cannon I had to find a sticker with fire on it. That meant reading the mind of a character who was obsessed with flame and removing the fire sticker from the thought bubble that appears.
Essentially to complete a given level you will need to solve lots of small problems to get past the big one.
Personally I found the puzzles to not be too difficult, but perhaps that is due to my years of playing point and click adventures. That isn’t to say that I found it any less enjoyable though.
The platforming is simple but effective, you’ll be evading enemies and search lights and of course jumping from platform to platform. The controls were very responsive though I did have to switch from my control pad to the mouse and keyboard because I found it easier to control the ‘hand’.
The game is designed to look like the world is made from cardboard and paper, that is to say that it isn’t made from paper but rendered to look like it (unlike Lume which is actually made from paper). And it is done to great effect, and makes the main mechanic of the game make sense.
It’s a great game, if a little short. You can beat it in about six hours if you’re efficient and there isn’t a failure state as such. But all that’s unimportant because where this game shines is its humour. For that alone I can’t rate it highly enough.
