When I first started playing
Mr. Smoozles Goes Nutso, I have to admit I was thrown off by the
arcade-like look and feel of the game.
Now I like to think of myself as a connoisseur of traditional adventure
games, where the emphasis is more on exploration and puzzle solving
at your own pace, rather than scampering around frying alien brains
with plasma blasters. Any game which attempts to mix action elements
with traditional adventuring is looked upon by me with intense suspicion.
So when I found out that Mr. Smoozles Goes Nutso was an arcade-adventure
hybrid, I wasn’t frankly all that excited.

Mr. Smoozles Goes
Nutso is an arcade-adventure where you control Ed, a cute little cat,
as he tries to stay alive by avoiding the
zap-happy Mr. Smoozles, who has gone bezerk. The reason for Mr. Smoozles’ strange
behavior is that his brain has been warped by the Goragons, who have
invaded earth and are using Mr. Smoozles’ house for their base. Ed
must free his friends who’re being held captive, restore normality
and defeat the Goragons’ plans. To do this, Ed will need to
embark on quests that involve interacting with characters and collecting
various items, and then using them at the appropriate occasion, much
like in an adventure game. What’s different here is that Mr.
Smoozles will be hot on your trail, and if you’re not careful
and get zapped one too many times by him, you can actually die. However,
if you are not a big fan of dying and restarting from your last save
game, you can tone down the arcade elements in the game by playing
in the easy mode. I found that having Mr. Smoozles chase me around
was not all that annoying, and merely added to the sense of urgency
of the scenario while I completed my quests.

I have to confess that
my initial skepticism faded away as I spent some more time with
the game and found an interesting story unfold
before me. Playing this game reminded me a little bit of two old
classics – Commander Keen and Bomberman, except that you won’t
be planting bombs or zapping aliens, and there is plenty of wholesome
adventuring goodness sprinkled all over. The preview version of the
game was a lot of fun to play, and assuming that the designers put
the required effort into the storyline, pacing and puzzle development,
Mr. Smoozles Goes Nutso will definitely be a game to watch out for.