First Impressions: Super Exploding Zoo/Steamworld Dig: A Fistful of Dirt

I didn't get enough time to play through both of these thoroughly and so I've decided to do a joint First Impressions.

First, Super Exploding Zoo. The first that hit me about the game was its cute, cartoony graphics which really lends itself to the gameplay. If it had more realistic graphics I don't think that the game would have been allowed to be sold. (More on that in a moment) Next was the fact that my animal minions exploded when they touched something. To begin with, the game sent me on a little tutorial (if you could call it that as it had barely any helpful dialogue or signs at all) in which I learnt that I could gather more exploding animals to join my army as well as the fact that different animals have different abilities (but I couldn't see a way to do anything other than running into enemies and exploding to deal damage). The enemies were some totally unexplained aliens which could be dealt with by chucking as many innocent zoo animals at them as possible.

That's about all for that game so now onto Steamworld Dig: A Fistful of Dirt. In this game, you apparently take control of a robot (?) miner as he tries to get across the world for a reason that I never found out. The reason I didn't get very far in this game was that I had started some way into it on account of all the people who had played it throughout the day and so didn't really know what I was meant to do. The place I was in was very dark and so my very helpful avatar decided to tell me that I needed more light. I took his advice and walked into a lamp. What was his reply? I need more light. Oh. Well, I eventually managed to get out of that area and into another section with a heavier focus on platforming and a lighter focus on, well, light. It was then that I found out why my character carried a pickaxe. The reason was that there were some blocks of dirt that he could break so as to get further into level or you could hit the stone walls to create sparks which lit up the area around you for a very short time. Annoyingly, though, he couldn't use his pickaxe while jumping or falling so I got stuck before proceeding to give up and walk to another game where I had an inkling of what was going on.

Overall, both these games were very similar: they both had nice, cartoony graphics, an interesting premise, and, in both, I had no idea what was going on.

Goodbye for now, Harry