Whenever someone mentions an armadillo, the first thing I think of is that old Dime Bar advert starring Harry Enfield
So, when I first heard about Vancouver based Fuzzy Wuzzy Games debut title Armillo, the first thing I thought was ‘Crunchy on the outside, smooth on the inside, ARMADILLOS!’
However, after playing the game, it turns out that weird analogy also applies to Armillo.
You see, the crunchy part comes from the game’s presentation which is somewhat rough and ready, the front end and menus look a little cheap, and there are occasional random frame rate dips whilst playing and a bright and colourful, albeit dated, art style reminiscent of classic N64 era Rare titles like Banjoe Kazooie with Armillo looking particularly adorable.
However, it’s smooth on the inside because despite looking like a game from a bygone era, Armillo shines thanks to incredibly tight, if a little unfocused level design and gameplay that is simple yet solid taking obvious inspiration from many other note worthy platformers such as Pac man, Marble Madness, Mario Galaxy and Sonic Spinball.
Now that I’ve managed to poorly shoe horn in that vagely relevant thing from the 90s I liked, it’s time to get on with the show.
Being a mascot platformer, the story is rather simplistic, there to frame the action and little else. In Armillo, the titular space armadillo from space returns home after a vacation to find that his home planet has been invaded by the evil Darkbots, who have kidnapped Armillo’s friends and intend to strip the galaxy of all life as part of some intergalactic fracking operation in order to power themselves, turning every planet into a barren husk in the process. Not one to just let his friends be converted into robot fuel, Armillo sets off on a journey to save his pals and put a stop to the Darkbots diabolical plans.
Each level presents you with a large maze constructed on a planetoid. Your goal is simple: find the exit and free as many of your whisp like buddies as you can. Rather than walking, Armillo rolls around each level like a large orange marble, with the added bonus of being able to jump and perform a dash attack to boost his speed and break through barriers.
To begin with, the game is rather simplistic and you’re practically guided on rails around the colourful levels, occasionally bashing your way through a minor obstacle or avoiding an easy to kill enemy, until you inevitably come to the exit.
However, with each new stage, the game adds extra new mechanics, enemies and terrain types, burning through ideas at a brilliant rate of knots. As such, you never quite know what’s coming next, aside from the arbitrary ice and fire missions that the genre pretty much demands at this point, flip flopping between being both ingenious and infuriating as the difficulty swiftly skyrockets with each increasingly complex new level.
Before you know it, the games goes from an almost literal roll in the park, to trying to jump from one precarious orbiting platform to the next at breakneck speed, because that’s the only way you can get to the next, whilst trying not to fall off the edge of the level into oblivion.
Occasionally, you’ll find yourself transported to the Darkbot dimension. As you would expect, it’s a barren hellhole that bears more than a passing resemblance to ‘reality’ in The Matrix. It also has a poisonous atmosphere so staying there for too long can prove fatal. Basically, you have thirty seconds to get from point A -B, solve a puzzle or kill something before you can leave lest poor Armillo suffocate on the noxious fumes contained within. These speed run sections are pretty tense, and add a much needed sense of urgency to the proceeding as well. I always love a bit of dimension shifting and lateral thinking in the midst of an otherwise methodical plod to the finish line.
Each fifth level contains an inevitable boss battle against some suitably generic and obnoxious robot or flying saucer. Although none of the fights were particularly complex, there was usually some weird yet entertaining power up to use whilst battling the tin menaces. My favourite was what can best be described as a high powered laser crudely duct taped to Armillo’s forehead, that you had to fire at the robotic git every time he attempted to squash you.
However, in order to face the boss you first have to complete one of the game’s secret levels (unlocked by finding a hidden cube in one of the mains ones) and saved a certain number of friends in the previous stages leading up to it, because well, I can’t remember, something to do with them helping you land there… I think.
These secret levels, unlike the rest of the game, are presented in 2D and look a lot like what your average commodore 64 HD remake might look like if such a thing ever existed. Apart from Armillo, who looks a little too slick for his surroundings if you ask me. The goal is simple, get to the red swirly thing at the end before the time runs out.
As you would expect this is easier said than done, as each level is peppered with all kinds of twists, turns and traps. In fact, there’s a level where the entire thing twists and turns, and the trick is to try to position yourself so that you’re constantly falling towards the aforementioned red swirly thing.
On the whole, the 2D levels are rather challenging, mainly due to the limited time allowed for their completion, but also because of a floaty double jump mechanic that fast becomes more of a hinderance than a help. Often you won’t quite reach the platform you were aiming for or you’ll miss it entirely and land face first in a pit of wiggly electricity through no real fault of your own. This wouldn’t be such a pain in the arse, if there wasn’t a strict time limit and the levels themselves didn’t demand an element of precision that Armillos’s movements sorely lack. As a result, success felt more a matter of luck, than judgement.
Despite these niggles, they’re still a lot of fun. Exhibiting the same kind of creative ADHD as the core 3D levels, in that you never know what the game’s going to hit you with next, and before I knew it I was compulsively scouring previously conquered planetoids for the hidden cubes I needed in order to get the full set.
The other upshot of this was that it also allowed me to unlock more upgrades in the games shop by grabbing more of the energy orbs that are scattered throughout every level, like so many golden coins or rings. Most upgrades exist purely to make the game’s trickier later levels less aggravating by doing simple things like extending the timer in the Darkbot dimension or giving Armillo other fundamentally useful things like more health and lives. However, the game doles these out at a rate that never makes them feel like more than a helping hand, keeping the challenge constant, whilst rewarding your hard work in the process.
It took me about five hours to get through Armillo’s main levels. It then took me probably another five to unlock and playing through all the ‘secret’ levels. There’s also a ranking system tied to everything, so you can go back and try to get gold medals on everything, as well as top the online leaderboards, if you’re into that kind of thing.
For the price of a pint in a proper pub (you know ones that have a landlord and a huge mostly harmless dog asleep in a corner instead of a regional manager and a bunch of noisy children doing shots of Toilet Duck at the bar), Armillo is more than worth the price of admission, a cheery and inventive throwback to the N64 ‘glory days’ of 3D mascot platformers that skillfully blends some of the better mechanics from more famous faces of the genre, whilst adding a few new neat ideas of its own. ARMADILLOS!
