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Home / Reviews / Apps and Games / Android / App of the week: Silly Walks review

App of the week: Silly Walks review

Dodder for your life and save your fruity chums in this very silly one-thumb arcade game

In a world where every household object has come to life, things aren’t going well for any that happen to be edible. The evil Blender has kidnapped your berry chums, and only you can save them. Unfortunately – as you might have gathered from the name of this game – in Silly Walks, you’re hampered by a very silly walk.

We’re not quite in John Cleese territory, but star of the show ‘Pineapple’ (in fact, some kind of cocktail) walks a bit like a bow-legged cowboy. It turns out, this isn’t the smartest way to get from your starting point to your soon-to-be-juiced chums; especially when in-between you find stabby knives, pulverising hammers, and all manner of psychotic household appliances.

In fact, it’s even sillier than that, because there aren’t even any remotely granular controls. If you expected to toddle along by way of a virtual joy-pad, nope – the fruity hero is controlled entirely by a single finger.

Thumb bandit

Tap the screen and Pineapple plants its left foot on the ground and proceeds to rotate anti-clockwise. Tap again and the right foot goes down, and the tasty protagonist rotates clockwise instead.

With careful timing and a bit of planning, you can get up a reasonable dodder, staggering along like a drunk after closing time, and very occasionally speedily ‘dashing’ across short distances by swiping the screen.

In early levels, it pays to take your time. You pick your way around a kitchen where suspiciously elaborate pathways have been created to get you between tables. Sugar cubes are eaten – which subsequently act as currency to unlock new levels. And you partake in wanton destruction wherever possible, booting glasses and bottles to the floor.

Walk this way

Walk this way

Increasingly, you find yourself in absurdist nerve-jangling moments: weaving your way through a herd of hammers or cheese graters; doddering for your life from a vacuum cleaner chasing you very very slowly; avoiding being beaned by slices of toast fired across the kitchen by a deranged toaster.

Make your way through the kitchen and further adventures await, including a surprisingly deadly back garden, and a street full of water-spurting fire hydrants and hero-squashing car tyres. At times (mostly when you’ve repeatedly failed at a level and been hurled back to the start), even the game’s good humour can pall. When you’re a few steps from victory and get squashed or sliced, it can be maddening.

That said, should you ever find yourself yelling at a particularly aggressive goggle-eyed mower, because you couldn’t unsportingly coax it over nails some maniac left lying in the grass, you should probably realise you’re being a bit silly and go for a walk yourself. Just not a bow-legged one.

Silly Walks is available for Android and iOS.

Stuff Says…

Score: 4/5

An endearingly ridiculous one-thumb arcade game with a cartoon vibe, and a surprisingly fierce hatred of fruit

Good Stuff

Cartoonish vibe

Smart, varied level design

It really is very silly

Bad Stuff

Some levels can be a bit too annoying

You will find yourself yelling at doddering foodstuff

Profile image of Craig Grannell Craig Grannell Contributor

About

I’m a regular contributor to Stuff magazine and Stuff.tv, covering apps, games, Apple kit, Android, Lego, retro gaming and other interesting oddities. I also pen opinion pieces when the editor lets me, getting all serious about accessibility and predicting when sentient AI smart cookware will take over the world, in a terrifying mix of Bake Off and Terminator.

Areas of expertise

Mobile apps and games, Macs, iOS and tvOS devices, Android, retro games, crowdfunding, design, how to fight off an enraged smart saucepan with a massive stick.