I was just about to start Butterscotch Shenanigans’ latest iOS title Towelfight 2: The Monocle of Destiny to grab a bunch of screenshots when my baby girl Natalia decided that she needed some attention. It’s interesting being a new father and a gamer at the same time, having to schedule play time for her and myself, not to mention the time to write stuff like this. I’m 100% confident that a few years down the road she’ll be gaming along with her old man on whatever it is that Sony or Microsoft come up with.
OK, back to the review. You know how the App Store is saturated with 8-bit titles; so much so that as a reviewer, my eyes start to bleed at the mention of “retro graphics”. No offense to developers who think retro is cool, but you know too much of a good thing, like sugar, can be really bad for you (think diabetes). But what if developers took the design principles of retro titles such as The Legend of Zelda, putting key emphasis on exploration with a whole slew of bizarre characters, and top it up with the clean, crisp lines of 21st century 2D animation?
I would say that the team at BS (heh, that was smart) have a winner right here with Towelfight 2. Players take on the role of Hardik, an Indian guy with a stereotypical monocle reminiscent of all things British India. Anyways, the old chap gets swept away to a strange land and that monocle of his gets enchanted to shoot out animals in order to destroy enemies. The first animal that you can shoot out of your monocle is a…frog. Don’t let that wet towel dampen your spirits as you get to collect more animals that deliver even more devastating firepower, well, except for the sloth, he’s just too slow coming out of the monocle.
Towelfight 2 is pretty unique for a game, as the game world is procedurally generated with interconnected rooms. Clearing rooms of enemies and destructible objects will net you coins, rescue NPCs, keys, animal weapons and treasure chests. It’s good to note that Hardik jumps around like a kid discovering a candy store for the first time whenever he gets a new weapon or an item, it’s not that the game is acting up or something. Hardik also has a penchant of saying irrelevant things when it comes to destroying enemies, so be sure to watch the screen for all the shout outs.
There’s quite a lot of content in Towelfight 2, and you get plenty of bang for your buck as the amount of hours you can put in to exploring the game can number in the dozens. The interconnected rooms allow you to take a breather from time to time, but you’ll find that combat is so addictive you’ll go “hey, let’s explore the next room”. The NPCs that you discover along the way have some pretty colourful dialogue, which in context of the game is good, since it shows character.
Towelfight 2, with all its irrelevant, quirky dialogue, crazy combat and vast amount of levels and not to mention sweet 2D graphics, simply delivers and is a heavy favourite of mine to being one of the best games in 2013. Nineoverten.com rates Towelfight 2 at a 5 out of 5. SIMPLY OUTSTANDING. The game is available on the iTunes App Store at a price of USD 2.99. Check it out over here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/towelfight-2-monocle-destiny/id599207248?mt=8
A review code was provided to Nineoverten.com for the purpose of this review. Natalia was not harmed during the course of this review and she was promptly attended to throughout the entire time :).
