There’s a new punk kid on the block. In Boo! Greedy Kid developed by Flying Oak Games, you get to scream and moon your way through soda fueled rampages in an 8 bit retro styled puzzle platformer that delivers more obnoxious novelty than it does fun.

In Boo! Greedy Kid, you play as a young disrespectful brat who’s goal is to scare the elderly residents of a nursing home to death (or near death) so you can steal their money to buy soda. Yep. That’s as deep as it gets. Along the way you will encounter resistance from cops of varying degrees of difficulty; from the chubby trigger-happy doughnut muncher, to the grappling hook and rifle wielding SWAT member.

The gameplay in Boo! Greedy Kid is fairly simple. You can run, roll, and hide behind large pieces of furniture. It does however offer two additional unique moves. You can drop your pants and moon the police officers to entice them to chase after you and you can scream to startle the old people. This game actually allows you to scream into a microphone or just press a button on your keyboard or controller to perform the function. I recommend just pressing the button as you will need to scream so often that the novelty of using your voice dies really fast and your throat will eventually get sore. That is if other members of your household don’t tell you to shut up first.

There’s a 3 star rating system for each level. You gain more stars depending on how quickly you make it through and how much money you collect. The key is to never get hit, because anytime you do, you lose money. Most of the levels have crazy low completion time goals. Sometimes it’s easy to hit, but other times it nearly impossible. The AI is random which adds to the challenge of getting through a level because you’re never sure what their patterns will be and also adds to the frustration of hitting that short completion time because there’s no real way to plan your moves. It’s just as much luck as it is skill.

The level design leaves something to be desired. It’s a 2D platformer, but as you progress through the levels you’ll quickly realize that almost every level looks the same. Since the whole thing takes place in a nursing home, there’s very little room for variety in the level designs. It’s always a few floors of the same type with different colored walls and the furniture switched up a little. Occasionally there is a basement or a restroom. That’s about it. For 100 levels.

As I stated previously, the graphics are in an 8 bit style which seems like it should bring a certain amount of nostalgic feel to it and I’ll admit that it does start off that way. The different elderly patrons and doctors are well designed and animated. Even the police have their own stereotypical looks and characteristics. There’s just not enough variety to keep it interesting through 100 levels.

The sound design is awful. There are a few sounds of tasers firing, clubs hitting, money falling, and of course the screaming that comes into play during Boo! Greedy Kid. What really grates on your nerves is the background music. It’s a high intensity, hard pumping beat that fits well in the beginning, but after a while of hearing it non-stop it really starts to wear on you. Plus there’s the whole interesting decision to let you scream into the game constantly to achieve your goals. I want to know who came up with that bizarre idea.

 

Boo! Greedy Kid is a weird game that I hoped would be hilariously quirky and instead ended up being a distasteful and insufferable bore. There’s just not enough diversity between the characters and level designs to make it fun or compelling. Yes it only takes about 30 seconds to 2 minutes to finish a level, but there’s 100 of them. There’s also a special ending for players who get 3 stars on every level, but getting them can be very tricky and it’s just not amusing enough to make most people want to make the effort.

Graphics: 4.0 An 8 bit style game with good character designs, but not much variety, especially with the backgrounds.	Gameplay: 3.0 Basic 2D platformer controls with a new voice integration system that fell flat.
Sound: 2.0 A soundtrack that’s only good for about 10 minutes before it’s too much to take any longer.	Fun Factor: 5.0 A strange idea for a game with characters I don’t care about and levels that become too boring too quickly.
Final Verdict: 4.0

Boo! Greedy Kid is available now on PC.

A copy of Boo! Greedy Kid was provided by the publisher.