Showcasing "Slinki" from Titan Forged Games.

We are honored to highlight our first Indie Developed game, and with a review to boot! As to not drag on, lets jump right into it!

The game we are highlighting is called “Slinki”, and developed by Titan Forged Games. Slinki is a 2.5D platform game where the player takes control of a mechanized rabbit with an awesome prosthetic boomerang like arm that the character uses to progress through the levels, and combat enemies.

Prosthetic arm throw.

The player moves the character with the A & D keys, or the left and right arrow keys and controls the boomerang arm with the mouse by clicking the left click button, or holding it for a more precise aim at where you want to throw the arm.

The player can cause the character to jump by pressing the space bar, at the current state of the project there is no double jump, but something the games does is allow the player to make greater jumps by holding down the left mouse button and timing the jump with the range of the thrown arm and pressing space.

High jump.

I had a bit of a challenge when first getting into the demo with the longer/higher jumps due to no current tutorial, or hints in game, after a few tries I finally got the right pattern down to be able to throw the arm and make the longer/higher jumps with ease.

The movement and running animation is very smooth in the game, and nice to look at, however at times it felt a bit fast but nothing to turn your nose up at. Jumping while running up sloped areas gave me a good leap that would cause me to sometimes overshoot where I had planned on land, but I can see this working as a pro for the players.

I was unaware of the checkpoint checkpoint system (partly due to my haste), until I came across Sharkfrog...Er..Maybe a Frogshark? Whatever the combination is all I know is it stomped me to death, and I'm glad it sent me back to the checkpoint I has missed. The checkpoints come as a cluster of three runes that glow when passed, and was a very nice touch, once I took notice of them as being checkpoints.

Checkpoint.

In my play through of the small one level demo I came across a couple of different enemies, one being a cute, but deadly hedgehog that would roll itself into a ball and “Come at me bro!”, and the shark creature mentioned above with the legs of a world class bodybuilder that stomps you like Mario stomps Goombas. The hedgehogs were pretty easy to deal with, but the shark caused me to miss it a few times with its hopping.

Cute Hedgehog.

Pesky Shark.

As I went through the level I came across a set of platforms that led up to a platform where a floating blue orb sat with the message”This is a collectable, it doesn't do anything yet.” being the bug tester I am I decided to try and collect it anyway, upon touching it, it disappeared and the message changed to “Or does it?”. I'm not sure if it actually did, or didn't do anything but I got a chuckle from it.

The death animations for the character, as well as the enemies was very nice to look at, it was like you were being digitally deleted. The background and landscape were also nicely done, and very pleasing to the eye. Nice greens complimented the blues and grays flowing very well together to bring life to the digital/robotic world the player navigates.

Character death.

Hedgehog death.

Shark death.

Platforms and level.

The pause button in the upper left corner, well did just that, but it also opened up another set of icons, one being a “menu” button which didn't do anything in the current demo, and a restart button that restarted the level. In the upper right corner was the health bar, it was a bit dull being all gray and squared off, but I'm sure this will change with the progression of the project.

The music, and sound effects complimented each other nicely and fit the level, a digital/robotic jungle, very well and offered ambient sounds of animals in the background but didn't take away from the music as a whole. I sat for a minute and just listened to the music enjoying the upbeat tempo and, the random jungle animal cries.

As I mentioned before there was no tutorial, or hints in the game besides a couple arrows to keep you on the right path, so it took a little playing around to get the full basics down, but I really enjoyed the short yet fun play through of the demo. Even though the demo was short, Slinki does a lot of things right and will engage the player with a good time and smooth controls. I'm really looking forward to see how the game progresses, and hope I'm one of the first to get to try out the full game.

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