Xbox Indie Review: Radiangames Fluid

Fluid is what you’d pour out of the blender if you tossed in the pellet-munching Pac-Man, the frantic gotta-beat-the-clock tension of a racing game and whatever extra psychedelics were lying around. The shift towards pacifism is somewhat of a surprise giving the previous Radiangames’ penchant for absolute destruction, but it’s a nice change-up, and it takes a rather simplistic, well-known formula and executes it to precision.

Having already updated and neon-ized Space Invaders and Gauntlet with its previous two releases, Radiangames now has its eyes set on that dot-crazed 80s icon. Sure, Fluid’s hero resembles a tiny black sperm instead of a pie, and it does swim around freely in wide-open levels, unlike the constrained mazes of Pac-Man, but the general premise remains the same: consume every dot as quickly as possible without being eaten.

As with Inferno and Crossfire, Fluid is no mere copycat content to rip off its predecessors for a quick buck. The changes made to the formula make Fluid feel quite fresh. The big twist is that once the  glowing, gold pellets are consumed, they turn red and start hunting down the player. With hundreds of dots in some levels, the cute little sperm-creature can amass quite an enormous swarm in a hurry. It kind of gave me the feeling that I was some foreign entity inside a body being chased around by the blood cells looking to purge me from the system, or an unwelcome villager being chased out of town by an angry raving mob.

The game actually starts off a little slow and is guilty of a bit of hand-holding. After the first eight-or-so rounds of this thirty-round affair, I was actually a little disappointed and slightly bored. Yes, it was a polished Pac-Man update – complete power pellets, portals and shiny graphics – but nothing felt terribly compelling about it. And then I died four or five times on the same level. And then I died seven or eight times on the next level. And then I fell in love with this sadistic little game.

What is so exhilarating is that everything happens so quickly and the game rewards you for completing levels within a certain time. Most levels can be completed in about thirty seconds and a single mistake is enough to derail a run through a level. In addition to the swarms of digested enemies looking to seek their revenge, there are also orange orbs throughout the levels that must be avoided. Survival and achieving high scores is based on choosing the proper paths and making precise turns in order to collect the dots and avoid death.

It almost reminds me of how some people describe racing games where they need to improve their lines and turns in order to optimize how they approach the track. This is even more true during the speed-run levels that feature no enemies at all. Those levels are full of speed boots and give the impression of a race car doing laps in an extremely circuitous course. Whenever I died, I had the feeling that I could take a turn a little sharper or figure out a slightly different path in order to shave off a few seconds or avoid the path of the invaders. The clock is always ticking in the corner of the screen, but more importantly, the level is constantly becoming more populated with baddies, so it is important to eat the dots as quickly as possible.

It also has that it’s-so-hard-but-so-addictive quality of the recently released Super Meat Boy. Death isn’t really anything to freak out about; levels restart almost instantly after biting the bullet, and can even be skipped after a few tries. Still, I never even contemplated skipping a level. Be it pride, fun, or the completionist mentality, I just had to finish each one.

Fluid continues the Radiangames’ formula of adopting classic arcade games, throwing spiffy graphics on them and changing the formula just enough to retain what made them so much fun while keeping them fresh and exciting. Call it evolution or homage, Fluid is plain-old fun, and should find a home on everybody’s hard drive.

Visit the Xbox Live Marketplace to add a free demo of radiangames Fluid to your Xbox 360 download queue.

Radiangames Fluid was provided for review by Radiangames. It is available for 80 MS points ($1).

By Mike Wall at August 30, 2011.

About Mike Wall

Mike grew up and lives near Philadelphia and has been intrigued with games ever since his parents preached that they rotted his brain. He studied journalism at Penn State and got his master's degree in secondary education before realizing that not even summers off would make that job palatable. He now works in marketing and is trying to find time to continue writing a book about zombies, aliens, vampires, the end of the world, and a talking cat.