Many Flash developers are a collective of programmers and artists who met each other at some tertiary institution, fused by their passion for games, hunger to create and longing to not get stuck in some morbid corporate cubicle. It’s an all-or-nothing proposition: aiming to be amongst the best of the scene, because that’s where the money is. This is everything that Juicy Beast are about. Even their studio name reflects their passion: ‘Juicy’ for the delectable games they make and ‘Beast’ symbolises their ferocious appetite for success.
Yeah, it’s a bit weird, but they are French Canadians… Fortunately Juicy Beast’s games hold up just fine.
Juicy Beast has created four games – and all four are worth mentioning. In fact, each one could make a Top Flash Games list. Yet most of them follow a simple formula: one-click controls and simple goals that you just keep repeating. Sounds drab? It would be if, say, you weren’t a giant monster annihilating the local villagers with its snot. Gobtron is a friendly-looking giant… thing that can shoot the mucus dangling from his nose towards targets. Gob up all the villagers as they storm to attack, picking up experience and increasing your snot speed and potency. All you do is point and shoot.
Want a bit more complexity? Nothing is simple with aristocrats, not even stuffing their faces. In Feed The King you have to stack cakes on top of each other until you drop too many (it gets tricky – there are floating rats in the way). Then you must guide the king in his upwards trajectory to eat the entire stack. The higher the stack and the more he chomps down, the better your score. This king never gets enough. It’s inhuman. And addictive.
Before we get to Juicy Beast’s pièce de résistance, there is its most ambitious and involved game. Dale & Peakot is a pure platform experience, but with serious pedigree. After something steals all of Dale the Farmer’s chickens, he and his rooster, Peakot, team up to get them back. Dale does the running, jumping and shooting, while Peakot stuns enemies and reaches distant switches. Never has one farmer and one chicken done so much for so few hens and apart from rescuing the feathers fowls, this adventure gave the world a top-notch and creative platform game.
Finally there is the tale of a masked wrestler who was kidnapped to Candy Land and has to escape via slingshot. Burrito Bison is having a bad day. Stuck in a wrestling cage, he sees only one way out: use the ropes to catapult him out of the arena. He can slam down on the gummy people running underneath, and steal stuff like pogo sticks and rockets to pick up speed. The faster he goes, the more barriers he breaks. Three and he’s escaped. Upgrade his stats to gain an edge and get down on some serious gummy ground and pound. And try to hit the clouds for the ultimate: a Candyfloss Piledriver. And all you need to wield all of this insanity is the space bar. Being a total bad ass has never been more suited for lazy people.
Last Updated: June 23, 2011
