Fury of the Furries (Amiga)

Fury of the Furries is the sequel to puzzle game Tiny Skweeks (aka The Brainies or The Tinies), and part of the Skweek series of games. Except it's also known as Pac-In-Time, which is part of the Pac-Man franchise.

I'm only up to the title screen and I'm already confused.

The game starts with a spaceship crashing down to a planet, observed by a furry/brainy/tiny... I dunno what they're called, it's one of those creatures on the title screen. Only this one has dark fur.

The crew of the crashed ship, a group of multicolour tinies, spill out onto the desert and take stock of their situation. They decide to... HOLY SHIT look at the blue one's eyes! The furries have Sonic the Hedgehog eyes, where they join together to make one giant eyeball, but the artists have taken it one step further and make both pupils move together.

Anyway they send the yellow one off to do something.

An evil looking tiny watches all this with his magic ball, and he's not happy. Also he's got a king tied up and gagged.

Well now I know exactly what's going on, I can start playing the game.

French, German, Spanish, Italian... Fremen? Isn't that a language from the novel 'Dune'?

Shamefully I had to cheat a bit to get this to appear to animate correctly. Anyway we're starting on the left in the desert area, where my ship crashed, and I guess we're heading over to the castle on the right to save the king.

Yeah, these developers really like Dune.

Looks more rocky than sandy to me, but whatever. The floating hand commands me to head right, so I shall comply.

Pac-In-Time (DOS)

The DOS version of Fury of the Furries is pretty much identical, except for more colours for the artwork and a midi soundtrack. But the DOS version of Pac-In-Time has many subtle changes. For example, the coins have been replaced with Pac-Man dots. And they've added two extra trees!

Also the tiny has been replaced by Pac-Man, but he moves exactly the same.

And moving the tiny around is a pain in the ass. He has to jump several times in a row to reach full height, he bounces off walls, and getting him to go where I want him to go seems harder than it should be.

I started off with a red tiny on this level, who seems to be able to eat through cracked floor tiles. He can't bite through this unbroken one though... even though he the one he just ate to get here was unbroken.

Yeah, it seems totally inconsistent which bricks can and can't be eaten and what the FUCK did I just do? I've turned my poor furry thing into a particle cloud.

Well I got him back, and tried to dig down further, but it's a dead end. Seems like I have to go down the left side.

Ah, I get it! I blow the furry up into the cloud of dots, then I can reform him into a different colour to use different abilities. On this level I've been given a blue tiny, who can swim underwater and kill enemies with a stream of bubbles. Eventually.

I broke through a brick with my bubbles and found a bonus level! I guess collecting 100 coins gets me an extra life.

I don't mind secret destructible bricks looking the same as all the others. They're supposed to, it's a hidden secret. It's only when I have to break through secret bricks to reach the regular exit that I get annoyed.

The green tiny has a grappling hook! Look how smug he is, he knows he's got the best power. Maybe I'll end up liking this game after all.


SOON, ON THE SAME LEVEL.

Well, messing around with the grappling hook lost me all my lives. I can build up a lot of speed using the thing, and it's easy to swing into a spiky thorny root or an enemy hiding just off screen and get insta-killed.

On the other hand, look how the rope bends around that wall! So cool.

Pac-In-Time (Game Boy)

The Game Boy version of Pac-In-Time seems to be more or less the same as the DOS version. Except it's zoomed in so it's hard to see where I'm going. And worse, the rope doesn't bend any more!

Also, Pac-In Time differs from Fury of the Furries in that swapping between different abilities is instant and I don't have to stand still to do it. But Pac-Man always remains yellow, no matter what skill he has active. Not really worth the trade off in my opinion.

And then on the next level I immediately jump into the spiky roots that I didn't see, and explode, losing my final life. Game over.

Well I would quit here, but I feel like the game deserves more of a chance. Like maybe the next level will suddenly be much better! Maybe the awkward movement will suddenly click with me. Maybe I just need more practice with it.


MUCH LATER.

Well I replayed the game from the start, and got past the level I died on, and didn't lose 4 lives by playing around with my grappling hook... and now I'm stuck with an exit that won't work, and I have 16 seconds to figure out why.

Oh, of course. I have to eat through the ground to use a secret teleporter.

There's only one way in, so I must be able to get through this brick somehow. But he just won't eat it, it is not an edible block.

A good puzzle game would make it so the solution is perfectly logical and when you solve it you should feel satisfied for figuring it out. In this the solution is to PUSH THE BLOCK.

Not once in the game so far has there been any block (or anything at all for that matter) that I have been able to push or move in any way. I've been able to shoot a secret block with bubbles, and I've been able to munch through cracked bricks and rocks and the occasional undamaged block. But this is just stupid.

So stupid in fact, that I was so preoccupied with thinking how stupid it was, that I stupidly jumped right down the hole without noticing the stupid insta-kill spiky trap hidden in plain sight directly underneath and got my stupid ass killed.

Finally I get an opportunity to use my fireballs! I just hope it doesn't take much longer to kill this thing, I've only got 4 minutes left here.

I've done it, I've reached WORLD TWO! They've given me some different background music to listen to at last.

I need to transform into red to eat through the cracked blocks on the right, but I can't do that underwater. Fortunately there's a switch right here that will no doubt lower the water level. A sensible and straightforward puzzle.

It's just a shame I didn't realise I could swim through the blue section of the column at first, and spent ages trying other stuff instead. I probably should have noticed there was a switch in there where I was coming here over the top, but in my defence I was dodging enemies at the time, and this is the first switch in the entire game.

Oh great, it's another puzzle based around me trying shit to see what works.

In this case I got desperate enough to start shooting the walls with fireballs (hey, it's never done anything before, but maybe this time... ), and guess what! This one and only block, although identical to all the others, can be destroyed by fireballs to release water into the area, letting me swim out and escape!

Okay that's it. I give up. I don't have a red guy to munch through blocks, I've shot at every block on screen and nothing happened... what else can I do?

I jump around for another 4m01s trying to get my dude through that green barrier without getting my ability taken away, then shoot every other wall with fireballs just to be extra sure, but nothing works. Game over.

I could load the last auto save but what would be the point? I've tried everything I can think of here already, and it'd probably dump me 4 levels back when I loaded anyway. This would probably be better with infinite lives like Super Meat Boy.

Out of curiosity I decided to check youtube how to solve this puzzle. It turns out that I have to pull the brick on the left with the grappling hook to release the water. Does that seem like a fair puzzle to you? Personally, I'm leaning towards 'no'.

Pac-In-Time (SNES)

Pac-In-Time on the SNES is very different to all the other versions. Pac-Man still has the four abilities to use, and the gameplay's pretty similar. But the levels and graphics are entirely different and now I have to collect ALL the Pac-Man dots before I can exit the level. At least Fury of the Furries wasn't that harsh.


I think it'd be fair to say I didn't like this one, in any version. Next game.