Sometimes a game will catch your eye for no other reason than an interesting piece of cover art. In the case of Toki Tori, it was the high adorability factor that drew me in.

Toki Tori was originally developed for the Game Boy Color by Two Tribes B.V. and released by Capcom. They have since done versions for the iPhone, Windows Mobile, WiiWare, and PC. The GBC version was itself an update of Eggbert for the MSX 2.

I saw it on one of the many Steam sales last year and picked it up on the cheap. I had heard it was a cross between Lemmings and a platformer. They had me at Lemmings.

It is a simple concept; You are a chicken trying to rescue your unhatched brethren. For some inexplicable reason, their eggs have been hidden throughout a series of maze-like levels. As Toki Tori, it is up to you to use everything at your disposal to save them.

Toki can’t jump or fly, but he can flap his underdeveloped wings (he is a newborn chick after all) to float down from any height to safety. More importantly is his access to puzzle solving tools. At the start of each level, you are given a limited number of tools used to solve that particular level’s puzzles (this is where the Lemmings comparison originates); everything from a gun that turns enemies into blocks of ice to simple platforms you can use to cross gaps. It is really all a matter of figuring out where and in what order to use the given items in to get to all the eggs.

You are given several options on the control scheme. You can use only the mouse, the keyboard, or even plug in a controller on the PC version. I can only assume on the iPhone edition it is completely touch based. For almost the entire first three worlds, I found using the mouse only controls to work really well. Later, once there were a lot more enemies on the screen and precise timing to run past them was required, I found the keyboard controls invaluable.

The Steam version had an update earlier this year that has increased my enjoyment of this game exponentially. Originally if you made any kind of mistake, you had to restart the entire level. The update added a rewind button that lets you go back as little or as much as you want. It feels like cheating at first, but once you hit some of the more complex levels, it will keep you from quitting the game out of frustration.

"Floating to Imminent Doom"

For a $5 puzzle game, you can do a lot worse than Toki Tori. It is a great one to pick up and play for a few minutes at a time. The difficulty doesn’t start to ramp up until near the end of the second world. If you are enjoying it but find it too easy, stick with it. The main game gets tougher and the 20 unlockable Hard levels put the regular levels to shame.

On a very special fifty-first episode of “Barrel Roll! A Video Game Podcast”, we are joined by Rebel FM podcaster extraordinaire, Tyler Barber.  He tells us all about his history as a gamer and how he got started podcasting about games.

In what we’ve been playing, there is discussion of Mass Effect 2, in which any spoilers are very carefully avoided. We also talk about the adorable indie game, Toki Tori, Wes’s completion of The Saboteur, the surprisingly good Tatsunoko VS Capcom (which has a disturbing lack of pizza related cats), the sadly disappointing Dark Void, and DS JRPG WTFBBQ Sands of Destruction. Wes also tells tales of more junk for the iPhone.

In our fake “Friday Old Games” segment, Jesse gives us the rundown on Dark Void Zero. Can it be that the tie-in game has once again out-classed the big budget counterpart?

All this and much more on Barrel Roll #51, “Dude, Where’s My Pizza Cats?”

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Outro Music – “Fortuna (Star Fox)” by The OneUps

Middle Song – “Touch and Go” by She

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Samurai Pizza Cats Art by lastscionz