#MIGHTY GOOSE DEMO ZIP#

I found myself relying too much on ducking just to get What’s more, the dash strangely makes you cut through bullets, as if you’re invincible, which makes the feature seem more like a band-aid for the inability to avoid attacks with simple jumping and walking.

#MIGHTY GOOSE DEMO ZIP#

One second you’ll be ambling, gun ablaze at the enemies closing in on you, and the next your character will zip from one side of the screen to the other. While, again, it is appropriately funny to have a goose clumsily somersaulting (rather than, say, gliding), the stark contrast between walking and dashing is frustrating. This is because one of the abilities your character has seeks to compensate for the slow movement: the dash feature. Though surely the sluggishness was in small part due to the fact that I used a keyboard rather than controller to play, there is clearly an awareness of this problem on developer Blastmode’s Your character, goose though it may be, feels sluggish and floaty in its general walk and jump actions. Mechanics of a run-and-gun game at the root of these issues: movement. Not to mention that it is one of the core, must-be-polished However, since there isn’t much complexity to plot, characters, or even environments, the gameplay issues that are still present in this beta build become that much more glaring. Mighty Goose has a lot of humorous, low-stakes fun. Giving you radio intel along the way is Chonk, a chubby rabbit who calls himself your “operator.” In the beta preview build I played, the first mission you play has you trying to free, and eventually have as companion, Weaponmaster Vark,Ī pig who pathetically fights with a wrench and gives you special ammo.Īs you save Vark and tear through swarms of enemies with the gun attached to your wing (a la Metroid), you risk dying, of course-but when you do, you’re sort of rewarded by seeing your character turned into You play as the titular Mighty Goose, who is tasked with flying across the galaxy to accept missions on different planets and locales. There are even helicopter-type vehicles with a spotlight that drops bombs, a clear homage to an enemy in level three of Contra III. More specifically: the side-scrolling, run-and-gun elements and frenzied feel of Contra meets the goofy, animal characterizations and teammate tagalongs of Starfox. It’s like if Contra III: The Alien Wars was crossed with Starfox. The mightily funny Mighty Goose feels familiar yet welcome in its combination of nostalgia and absurdity. This game, this indie goose game, has a title, and it leans into it. We had the opportunity to go hands-on with a demo. Mighty Goose is all for show, something of a wink to those who demean videogames by proving them right, yet also being so absurdly fun, it’s expressively goofy and feels safe to be itself.At yesterday evening’s Playism Game Show, developer Blastmode showed off a new trailer for one of their upcoming games. In one sense, it’s not much of a game in lineage terms because it’s almost impossible to see incoming damage and even the secondary stages (with increased challenge) barely stall the appropriately named title character. Mighty Goose is like that, but with a machine gun, swords, and missiles. Drill Dozer comes to mind, in which a girl jumps into a machine, churning through dirt and steel. It’s a short-lived blip, a Game Boy Advance throwback to when neo-16-bit ideas sparkled into existence.

Mighty Goose is unlikely to persist in gaming culture. Those birds exist to kill, destroy, and torment. And aside from a honk, Mighty Goose’s silent protagonist is an inspired choice, even in a time of other goose-focused simulators. Mighty Goose doesn’t lean into its parody and that’s a mistake, yet what’s here proves generously entertaining. There’s no avoiding the Metal Slug influence, from the various obtainable ships, arcade-accurate length, and persistent explosive chaos. It’s absurd, and Mighty Goose is proud of it. Ask someone not abreast of modern videogames what a videogame is and Mighty Goose probably fits their thoughts – a game starring a goose with a machine gun arm traveling through space fighting evil magicians seems right.

Mighty goose demo