The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

As per usual, I pick up games on the iPod that people randomly mention are free when they are free. A few weeks back, I picked up a game called Dirt, which has indie art game written all over it. I’m going to discuss it today, spoilers and all, but if you want to know whether you should buy it for the buck it currently is, I would say no. As a free flash game or something, I’d tell you to try it, but I can’t say it’s deep or cool enough to be worth money when you can get so many better games on iOS for that price. Still, I did play it to competition and it was probably about an hour and a half or two hours spread out over a couple 15 minute play sessions over some weeks I didn’t feel bad about spending, so, you know, decide as you will. I will also say, though, that it makes a horrible iPad game, because you have to constantly rotate your device. I ended up playing it on my iTouch because of this.

In any case, spoilers start now.

You’re a cat skeleton with boots. You can dig in any direction, which is cool, I suppose. Rotating the device changes the gravity, so you can essentially dig up or down or wherever you’d like by turning the screen around. Basically all you do is explore this underground area like this, digging away dirt and seeing what’s there.

As you search, you find weird background and items, as well as gems. The only real HUD element is a pause button, which brings up a list of gem types and a goal number. Once you collect a certain number of gems, stuff happens, with the prompt “Dirt is starting to remember.” You know, the spoiler stuff.

It turns out each gem represents a member of the family that Dirt belonged to. Once you hit the first couple of milestones, each with a talking centipede who speaks for each of the characters in their color text, you are told, by death, to dig to the surface, where you see the family over your kitty cat grave. This basically made me go “Aww, but that’s short and kind of lame.” But then I realized I had new gem goals.

From then on, each gem goal will create a room where you will see a picture from Dirt’s happy home life. You’ll see how the kitty cat related to everyone in the family, and then, finally, you collect enough to find Death again, who tells you it’s time to go, and you start falling forever, watching scenes of the kitty cat wasting away and dying. Eventually, you hit the beginning of the game again, since the game started with “You are Dirt. You’ve been falling for days.” There you go.

The game is taking itself seriously, but it’s choosing a really mundane topic. Yes, the little girl in the family is sick with something, and Dirt is a good companion, but for the most part, you don’t learn anything unexpected about Dirt. Dirt is just a cat with a terrible name. In addition, there just simply aren’t enough little doodads and backgrounds to find in the game world in general. They’re really cool to try to piece together what they are at the beginning, but eventually you start seeing the same stuff over and over again, and it loses its mystery. Finally, the art just… isn’t great. I mean, it’s certainly better than I could draw, and the sprite art of the actual gameplay is fine, but all the art of the flashbacks and stuff just doesn’t do it for me. It doesn’t feel professional, and it hurts any level of attachment you could potentially have with these characters. It’s unfortunate.

This is a good try, and a good start. Digging around and exploring is great! I just felt like it needed a few more passes to be truly meaningful and effective. It has all the mechanical elements it needs, but I just left not feeling much for anyone. I wanted to finish it to write this review, not because I was engaged. Oh well.