The 2D Adventures of Rotating Octopus Character
We must move forward not backward, upward not forward, and always rotating, rotating towards freedom!
Picture the scene: a bomb is dropped into the ocean. It explodes; spreading baby octopuses across the world. A solution to world hunger? For a meal or two at least, but not if 2D Rotating Octopus Character has anything to do with it! Your task is to collect all the lovably cute bits of calamari from around the world. Poverty is achieved not only by rotation but jumping too.
You see, The 2D Adventures of Rotating Octopus Character (T2DAROC) is a 2D, two button platformer. Octopus Character sticks to whatever it jumps onto, and then along the surface in one of two directions that can be changed with a tap of square.
There is no way to stop Rotating Octopus from rotating, for if there was, it would probably have to change its name. Okay, technically mashing square will keep rotating octopus from rotating away. And it turns out that this 2 button platformer does in fact have a third button: triangle which pauses the game completely with no menu pop up so that you can take a moment to see where the sushi and the obstacles are.
Oh yeah, you didn’t think it would be as easy, rotating and jumping around a level with no one trying to stop world hunger, did you? You underestimate humanity. Or rather, you underestimate pit bulls, top hats, fezzes, snakes and birds. Selfish bastards. These nasty critters start off seeming harmless enough: pit bulls sitting in the corner minding their own business, barking and only biting Rotating Octopus when Rotating Octopus rotates too close, but a few levels in and suddenly you’ve got mobile top hats to contend with, and homing beaks shot from birds or knives from sushi chefs. And let’s not forget the projectile wasabi…
What starts as a rather simple and engaging, though hardly exciting concept is soon a fast paced dance, and you better learn your choreography. The way to get through the latter levels is part puzzle and part skill: you must first work out what path you need to take to collect all the baby octopuses without being killed in the process and then actually follow your plan and pull it off.
This involves pin point jumping, acrobatic rotation and a great deal of trial and error, and at first you might be quite pissed off that each section consists of ten levels and there’s no saving mid-section: you need to pass all ten levels in one go, but once you get used to it, this adds to the game’s arcade sensibility and challenge. Besides once you learn a level off by heart it’s not too hard to redo. Even the latter levels can be redone with relative ease once you know them off by heart.
Which is where the challenge mode comes in. While there is a time limit in the normal game it rarely plays a factor. Here the time limit is lowered to speed run levels of challenge and you not only have to work out a new path through the levels (the old way you played probably won’t cut it when you need to complete a level in 6 seconds) you’ll also have to put to use all your rotating and jumping skill and any mistake will most likely prove fatal when going for the gold medal.
Words don’t quite do it justice because it’s both as simple as it sounds and a million times more complicated. It’s cute with a great sense of humour and is everything that a PSN Mini probably should be. It’s instantly accessible yet as challenging as you want it to be and it’s just plain endearing.
After a routine PSN update I lost my save data. I wasn’t angry because I knew I would enjoy playing through it again (though not those damn challenge levels! They’re the sort of torture I wouldn’t want to put myself through again. And I mean that in a good way!) but then I remembered that when my courtesy PSN Plus ran out I would no longer be able to play. Then I was sad, but perhaps it was a good thing that I lost my save. After all if I stop now it will make the pain not quite so bad. Right?
Right?