Casual Game of the Week: 'Tasty Planet' Review (PC)

In this hectic world we live in, many times work and appointments must come before the fun and joys in our lives, including that of getting to play videogames whenever we want. Gone are the days when we could fire up a game of our choice and spend hours toiling away – now we seem to game in stolen moments here and there. With that in mind, perhaps it is no wonder that casual games have become such a popular gaming choice (especially with women who make up the vast majority of casual game players), as casual games allow us to either jump in and get those quick fixes of gaming bliss or either play them for as long as we want when we do have the time. In honor of the casual game, we'll be bringing you a new Casual Game of the Week every Monday to help you find that fix you might be needing in your life, and this week we have: Tasty Planet.

Have you ever had one of those days where you just get so angry you just want to destroy everything? You know, get so mad you just want to punch your fist into a wall? Okay, maybe that's just me…let me take a pill and I'll mellow out and then I'll start talking about puppies and rainbows and all the other niceties. For those supervillains/world destroyers in training, though, you've got your Katamari Damacy/Blob/B-movie casual game right here, where it is in your programming to eat and destroy everything in your path. Welcome to the world of Tasty Planet.

As told in a series of comic panels, you play as a gray blob of ooze, who was created in a lab one day by two scientists who were building the next big bathroom cleaner. The blob works alright, as you (resigned to an experimentation dish) eat all the dirt in your way. However, you grow a bit rabid, take a bite out of one of the lab technicians, and end up in their bloodstream. Soon you are eating their blood, get washed out, and find yourself in the great big world. You'll soon be eating aphids, ladybugs, flies, and leading up to even bigger and better things. The world is yours and your appetite is insatiable!

As mentioned, the game plays a lot like a more casual Katamari Damacy. In Katamari Damacy, you rolled a ball around, picking up small objects, and once your ball was then big enough, you'd be able to grab even bigger things, up to and including things like cars, people, buildings, etc. Tasty Planet works much in the same way, as you'll use your mouse to roll your blob around the flat environments, eating all the small things in your path, so you'll be able to eat larger objects, and then even larger ones.

Most levels start with your blob at its most smallest for each level, and the game will then give you a time limit, in which you much reach the next required shape size to pass the level and move on. Typically, you'll have to eat all the smaller things, and then when you eat enough, there is usually at least one major item, and once that is then eat, you usually complete the level. To help you along the way, you've got an arrow that will point you in the direction of the largest item you can eat. Sadly, things aren't completely easy going, as there are, of course, some objects naturally bigger than you, and if that thing should just so happen to be alive, you'll soon find yourself eaten and devoured; it is very much about being a small fish in a big pond, and trying to make yourself Moby Dick.

Besides that basic level, there are a few other variants to mix things up a bit. One level type has you trying to eat a certain amount of a certain object in a given time limit; this type of level is admittedly the weakest of the set. The second best level of the game has the game mechanic switching up to a maze format, where you must find a specific number of puzzle pieces, but to get them you must take deliberate set paths, working your way through an extremely linear fashion, all so that you can reach the first piece you need, which will allow you to grow large enough to eat the stuff you need for the second, and then so on and so on.

Besides the story driven Normal mode, you've also got the Casual mode (where you can take your time gobbling everything up without worry of time restrictions), and Endurance mode (where you have larger levels in which you need to survive and grow).

The graphics aren't flashy to any extent, but they are charming with their top-down, simplistic visual appeal. For instance, your gray blob is simply a squiggly outlined amorphous creature with two big ol' eyes like you'd find on one of those ticking cat clocks in kitchens all across the world. The levels are pretty sparse when looked at as background, but thankfully that helps you know what you can and can't devour to make yourself larger. The sound work is infinitely better, thanks to the cheesy lounge lizard sound of the "dum dum dum dum" adventure music, plus the sound of this monstrous blob killing everything is decidedly cute, as its gobbles and cheers of level completion make this monster seem anything but.

If you've always wanted to try your hand at Katamari Damacy but never had the PS2 equipment to play it, now is your chance to experience this cute little copycat, as you'll be eating everything in your path, and you'll have a nice little time experiencing the scattered story as you eat everything that stands in your way. Tasty Planet comes in a completely buyable version, as well as a free one you can play online. A good casual game is one thing, but a good free one is one that you should never pass up. Will it satiate your gaming appetite? Yep, it sure will, so get going now…just be sure you don't eat me when you get big enough.

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