The Game Factory has a habit of transporting several cartoon shows to the gaming world successfully too, and Pet Alien is another title that follows the rule.
Based on the colorful characters from the show, this adventure begins with an alien abduction. Little Tommy and his alien friends are taken by the Robotix, who plan to open an intergalactic zoo and showcase specimens from different planets.
We start by playing as Gumpers, the pink gorilla-like creature, and make our way through the ship to find the rest of his friends, rescue Tommy and get back to Earth.
The gameplay is divided into several action/puzzle stages representing sections of the spaceship. Each floor is composed of a series of levels that you must pass and eventually reach a boss fight at the end of a given floor.
The different stages will have all sorts of obstacles to get through. There are mines, laser beams, barriers, crystal blocks, evil robots, switches, buttons, crates and locked color-coded doors.
The main goal is to collect all the green crystals to open the portal to the next area, while solving the puzzles around you. For example, if there is a locked door, you must pick up the respective color card.
Crystals and cards are displayed on the touch screen, while the action takes place on the top screen.
Each of the five characters has a particular ability to help in the puzzle solving. Gumpers can destroy certain barriers and crystal cubes. Dinko can dash, which makes him useful to go across conveyor belts. Scruffy has an extendable tongue that can reach crystals and switches that others can’t, and he is so small that he can easily squeeze by narrow passages. Flip can fly for a short period of time, making him useful to hop over mines and other obstacles. Finally there is Swanky, the only one who can push and pull crates around, great for pressing down buttons or blocking lasers.
Solving the puzzles requires a little bit of thinking and planning, since there are certain things you must do in the right order. The game has a handy camera feature that lets you scout at the entire area to have a look at the surroundings and figure out what you need to do.
Once you finish your first stage, you will see a sort of a map on the top screen with a plan of the ship’s floor. You can progress to any of the stages that are directly connected to the one you have just finished, they will be shown in light blue. Stages you haven’t been to yet will show a star. To access the boss fight you must have first completed a certain number of stages on that floor (there will be a number above the boss that tells you how many you have to do). The boss fights aren’t too complicated, but they require a bit of strategy and quick reflexes.
There really isn’t a game over, since if you die, you just restart the level, with infinite continues.
As you progress and complete more and more stages, you will randomly unlock pictures on the gallery, while defeating a boss unlocks a mini-game. There are five mini-games, one for each of the alien characters, and they’re quite fun and give you a break from the puzzle-solving.
Burp’n’Fart is the first one you come across. You play as Gumpers in a Simon Says/memory game where you have to mimic the order of the drums’ sounds by tapping them with the stylus after the sequence. Hop or Top is played with Swanky and four barrels, containing 3 bombs and a crystal. The barrels will scramble and you have to pick the one with the crystal. Daydream is a flying game where you control Flip with the D-pad and blow into the mic to slow him down, collecting the crystals and avoiding the meteorites. We play as Scruffy in Slurp-Attack, using his extendable tongue to collect the crystals and avoid the falling tires. Dinko is the hero of Asteroid Run, where you collect crystals by circling them with the stylus, and dodge bombs by tapping them. All of the mini-games give you a margin of four mistakes.
I like the colorful and bright look of the puzzle stages, and how the difficulty factor varies. Some of them you can figure out right away, while the solution for others requires a little more work and thinking. And then there are those that keep you scratching your head for a long time, and then you finally figure out something that was oh so simple… There are 80 levels to solve, which can keep you busy for a long time, and the mini-games give it some replayability value.
The only flaws I found were the lack of touch-screen controls (the main story is all played with the D-pad and A button) and the music gets a little annoying after a while.
Other than that, Pet Alien is actually quite fun and appropriate for all ages, though the logic thinking may be too much for younger gamers.
Special thanks to Damien Sarrazin and The Game Factory for providing a copy of this title.