I’m a sucker for games with colorful, vivid artwork, so when I saw LucidDreams’ ‘A Walkabout Journey’, my interest was immediately piqued. Its style is really quite impressive, mixing a dreamlike aesthetic with a somewhat Burton-esque edge.

In the game, you control a rag-tag group of adventurers who must be guided through a variety of the levels. Honestly, I’m not 100% on what they are, and even the app store description calls them ‘mysterious characters’. They look like a bit of an odd cross between scary redheaded children, clowns and those not-at-all-terrifying dolls with button eyes.  While I found the environment beautiful, the characters were more on the off-putting side.

As mentioned previously, the objective is to get these fellas to the end of each level. You control their movement through the levels by rotating the screen to shift gravity. The camera moves in a set pattern, and you have to make sure they stay in the frame. You will also have to contend with moving platforms, gates and deadly black clouds. It’s a bit tricky to get them all to land precisely, but the game’s controls are fairly precise and you’ll see your characters bob back and forth as you shift the screen, reacting quickly to its motion. Considering they were being thrown about like sacks of potatoes, I’m surprised there was no injury or even nausea, but I suppose in weird clown dream world you can take a lot more collision. The levels are simple enough, but I found towards the end it became to keep the group together as I would move them around, and I would often lose one or two of them in a particularly big jump. This would cause them all to put out voice bubbles with sad faces. I’m only guessing that these are sad faces – I really can’t tell with these things.

The music is a jaunty, happy melody but I didn’t feel it complimented the game’s look and feel that much. I guess I was expecting something a bit slower or perhaps more surreal, but I guess that wasn’t the direction they were going in with this game.

In any event, Walkabout Journey is a fun, cute affair that’ll only set you back a dollar

[Walkabout Journey]