Friday Free Game: Go Go Plant Wednesday, July 02, 2008

Posted early in observance of Independence Day in the States.

Go Go Plant scratches the specifically twitch-gamer itch, sort of like Dino Run (the last Friday Free Game from late May(!)), and it's a great candidate for this week's twenty-minute casual distraction. It's a bizarre concept that somehow works. You're a plant, see. And you're grabbin' money. Why? Doesn't matter; it's fun.

The controls are a marvel of perfect design: up to fly, down to dig, forward to punch, back to grab. Somehow it all gels seamlessly in your brain in .3 seconds, and you're off finding Zen-like flow with this game almost equally as fast.

I think the fact that the boards are scripted adds to the addictiveness of the game, because the controls are natural and responsive (but, of course, not too responsive) and the timing they throw at you is always a little tricky. I found myself playing the beginning several times and enjoying each time. There was a good amount of playtesting done on this game.

But don't get me started on the soundtrack. This has got to be one of the most truly random and insane couplings of sounds and visuals ever seen in a Flash game, and that is saying something. The music is this eerily poor recording of some man singing in some language that could be Italian but fucked if I'd know if it was Swahili. And your little green hero is a potted plant with an elastic fist and a butterfly net. And I am not making that up. It's pretty damn strange.

But, like I said, fun. Play Go Go Plant.