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“Dodge That Anvil” by Rabidlab is a real winner! No really, it’s the winner of the 2006 Independent Games Festival award. What’s even more impressive is that it
was all done by one person! (see pic.on your right)
Credits
Game Design:
Jake Grandchamp
Technical Lead:
Jake Grandchamp
Art Director:
Jake Grandchamp
Lead Producer:
Jake Grandchamp
Now that’s what I call independent.
As far as the story goes, well I think the title pretty much says it all don’t you, no further explanation is wanted or needed here right? You do? Ah heck, ok then, well gather around boys and girls, because its storytime (snack and naptime to follow.)
The rabbits of Eastwarren have always been unusually smart. While the other animals stole crops from humans, they watched and learned how to grow their own. They prospered for many years by planting vegetable patches in the forest.
Then, one fine ordinary autumn day, the impossible occurred. Anvils began to fall from the sky! Why? Well, um.... does it really matter? This is cartoon logic here.
Fearing for their lives, the rabbits fled from the fields, leaving the crops to rot. Faced with starvation, Eastwarren's greatest minds met in order to come up with a plan for surviving the never ending anvil storm. With the help of gopher engineers, they developed a set of highly advanced harvesting equipment. These tools, they explained, would allow a very quick and brave rabbit to endure the anvil invasion for some time.
Only one such rabbit volunteered. But can one little bunny gather enough crops to feed the entire warren?
(It was originally going to be called "Collect the Carrots" but it just didn’t have the same zing to it!)
The game is very easy to pick up and play, controlling your rabbit consists of just moving your mouse around to walk, and left clicking to stop and/or pick up carrots. In each level, you must pick a certain amount of carrots all while,yep you guessed it, dodging anvils (and other objects.) You get extra points for picking more; and radishes picked give you bonus points that you can spend on equipment, like hard-hats that save you from one anvil-strike, armor vests, and veggie magnets that attract nearby vegetables.
Your bunny will automatically hop; and this works well most of the time, except when you’re near corners and you tend to get trapped or it hops when you don’t want it to.
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Don’t let its cartoony appearance fool you however, "Dodge That Anvil!" is far from being an easy kid’s game. In fact later levels become pretty hectic and more challenging, soon the anvils will drop quite often, and you’ll spend more time dodging anvils than harvesting carrots in order to meet your quota. There is also a lot of strategy involved in the game; since larger carrots take longer to pull out of the ground, you’ll be very vulnerable to flying obstacles as you attempt to unearth these massive veggies. And since you can’t stop harvesting a carrot once you have started, you’ll often be very helpless as an anvil crashes down on your head. Ba-dang!
There is some lack of precision with the controls at times. I’ve been killed while being trapped against objects or when my rabbit auto-hop hopped (or didn’t hop) when I didn’t want it to.
However, the benefits of auto-hop far outweigh the drawbacks, so I’ll let it slide.
All in all “Dodge That Anvil!” is a well designed platform game. And it’s certainly the best rabbit-anvil game ever developed. Of course, it’s probably the only rabbit-anvil game ever developed, but that’s besides the point (hey it won an award didn’t it?)
• Encounter Boss battles, secret areas, and more!
• Over 40 levels in all, with 3 game modes. Story, Speed, Super Secret Mode (I won’t ruin it for ya.)
• Every level adds new types of gadgets, powerups, or bonuses.
• 3 different control options: keyboard, mouse and joystick.
• Great cartoony graphics and sound effects.
If there’s one thing that Looney Tunes cartoons have taught us, it’s that anvils are bad news! I for one, think the anvil epidemic has been going on far too long in this country and it’s time we took a stand against these metal menaces! Thankfully Dodge That Anvil! has taken the cause head-on.
(Hopefully, someone will be inspired by all this and take on that evil “Acme” dynamite company once and for all!)
Cartoon Law I: Certain bodies can pass through solid walls painted to resemble tunnel entrances; while others cannot.
Cartoon Law II: When it sets its mind to it a cat will assume the shape of a container.
Cartoon Law III: The Road Runner can materialize signs to express himself without speaking.
Cartoon Law IV: Wile E. Coyote is ingenious and invented some pretty cool gadgets even when he was really, really hungry.
Cartoon Law V: When poked (usually in the buttocks) with a sharp object (usually a pin), a character will defy gravity by shooting straight up, with great speed.
Cartoon Law VI: Everything falls faster than an anvil, even grand pianos on pulleys.
Cartoon Law VII: Explosive weapons cannot cause fatal injuries. They merely turn characters temporarily black and smoky.
Th-th-th-that's all folks!
Get Dodge That Anvil! Here
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Posted by oxyjen on Apr 18, 2007
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