They Need to be Fed is, aside from being a mouthful to remember and say, a gravity-based puzzle platformer. Only in this case, gravity doesnât necessarily apply in the way you feel that it should. Rather, each little center of mass â the blocks from which the playerâs avatar needs to leap â seems to have its own gravitational pull, its own sense of âdown.â
I wasnât sure about this colorful, cheerful-looking game when I first downloaded it and booted it up. The first level didnât capture my attention, but I decided to try the second and see if it improved. One classic double-take later, I realized Iâd been hunched over my phone, playing, for a solid half hour.
The controls are simple: a left arrow, a right arrow, and a jump button. Combined with that 360-degree sense of gravity, theyâre all you need to take a shadowy little monster through a level of rotating shapes, capturing diamonds along the way. You canât accidentally jump into the abyss, thanks to the gravitational pull from blocks, but you can jump into a variety of spikes and other deadly obstacles. Happily, the game is forgiving of such missteps, with checkpoints in longer levels and an almost-immediate respawn.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTIiLrH87gw
Perhaps the most oddly entertaining feature of They Need to Be Fed, however, is the âtheyâ in question. The title refers not to the rounded little avatars the player controls but, rather, to their final reward. After successfully navigating a level full of gravitationally dubious rotating platforms and spiked deathtraps, the ultimate goal⌠is to be eaten. Devoured, whole and greedily, by an equally shadowy sharp-toothed monster.
Thereâs something appealing about this cartoonish final savagery, and combined with the just-complicated-enough platforming and the just-clever-enough thought required to maneuver a level, making sure that They get fed is silly, absorbing, straightforward fun.
They Need To Be Fed [Android Market]
They Need To Be Fed [iTunes App Store]
