How Good Are Your Reflexes When Sugar Kid's Life Is At Stake?
Sugar Kid ($0.99) by Bulkypix and A Crowd of Monsters is a challenging reflex game that will be hard to put down. After this game, you'll never look at sugar cubes and lemons the same way again.
Bulkypix has teamed up with many indie game developers lately and brought us many good hits, like The Sandbox and Hasta La Muerte. So when I first saw Sugar Kid, I was intrigued just by the cute graphics.
Seriously, this game features some of the most charming visuals I’ve seen in quite a while. They’re colorful, fresh, and even a bit gory. Yes, that’s right — sugar can get quite messy. The game features the option to enable innocent graphics, or you can turn up the notch a bit with some gore. So while the game looks adorable on the surface, beware, as looks can be quite deceiving. The music in the game is also quite whimsical, and definitely suit the vibrant settings of the game.
One of the best things about Sugar Kid is the quirky characters and storyline behind them. Sugar Kid is our hero, and took over Mr. Lemon’s throne, and now he’s out for revenge. In each environment, Sugar Kid just wants to enjoy some playtime with his friend, Bernard, but Mr. Lemon kidnaps him and you’ll have to escape his water machine, which is used to melt Sugar Kid. That’s where you come in to save the day.
There are three lands that Sugar Kid will explore. Each of these areas will have 15 levels in each, and all of them will have a different criteria to meet before you can move on to the next level. What are the requirements? There are Survive, Free Sugar Kid, Reach The Score, and Fill The Grids.
When it’s Survive, you just have to have Sugar Kid survive until time runs out — pretty easy. Free Sugar Kid will have Sugar Kid trapped in a bubble, and you must fill it up with the proper liquid to make it pop so he can escape before time runs out. The Reach The Score objective will have you play until you meet the minimum quota for points. Fill The Grid is a bit tricky, because the ground will have certain spots highlighted for liquid that will be the only way to get points. Whenever you meet these criteria, you can advance.
Each new world will only be unlocked with a certain amount of stars, and you will eventually unlock Survival mode, which is separate from all of the normal levels. In Survival, the only thing you have to do is see how long you can survive.
So what are the controls? Just draw a bridge of smaller sugar cubes to direct the fluids that come pouring in from the top. These bridges will dissolve after a certain amount of liquid is on them, so be careful. All of the fluids will hurt Sugar Kid, so you had better try your hardest to prevent our sweet little hero from melting.
There will be obstacles along the way, such as spinning planks, and Mr. Lemon has lemon juice and cola along with water for his arsenal of deadly fluids. There are stars in bubbles to collect, which you can accomplish by filling up the bubbles with liquid. Sometimes, bubbles can only be popped with a certain liquid, indicated by the colored drop, or they have a timer attached to it. Power-up items are available as well, like steel bridges that don’t melt, umbrellas, hearts, and more. If you see these, just tap on them to activate them.
Game Center is supported for leaderboards and achievements. If you have trouble on any of the levels, you can purchase Bernard’s Help, which can get you three platinum stars each day. There are other premium items to help you too, like the Item Pro, which you can store items for use when you really need them. These are all available as $0.99 in-app purchases.
The game is all about reflexes and coordination, so you better think fast and make sure that Sugar Kid gets the least amount of harm done to him. I love the game because it’s a real challenge, features delightfully fresh visuals, enchanting music, and how can you resist such unconventional characters? I’ll definitely be cheering for Sugar Kid.
Sugar Kid is available at $0.99 in the App Store for a limited time to celebrate the launch (50 percent off), so make sure to grab it while it's cheap.
