Amidst the retro-style gaming boom that we’ve found in the gaming industry (especially in the indieverse), very few games try to actually emulate the look and feel of the handheld gaming system that introduced the world of gaming to so many of us. I’m speaking of course, about the original Nintendo Game Boy. Enter Christophe Galati’s Save me Mr. Tako! A charming platformer that finds us in control of an altruistic, ink-shooting octopus that we are introduced to in the middle of a battle against humans. Mr. Tako comes across a human female, and saves her from drowning. This puzzles pretty much everyone, who can’t figure out why he would want to save the enemy, but this pretty much sums up our hero- hero by choice, soldier by law. While there is another story to be found in the game, and quite a bit of dialog moving it along, I won’t dive into it so as to avoid spoilers.
Immediately upon booting up Save me Mr. Tako!, the first thing that you’ll notice is the four-color palette that would greet you on any original Game Boy game, and the default setting is to pea-soup green. While it’s a great nod to the venerable system, there are seventeen different color filters that you can play the game using by bumping the shoulder buttons to scroll through at any time. My preferred color choice ended up being the gray scale that closely resembles the virtual console games on Nintendo 3ds. There is also the option to turn on a frame as you’d see on the Super Game Boy, and various designs of that frame. The sprites in Mr. Tako are charmingly simple but wonderfully animated and lovingly detailed. Mr. Tako’s falling/diving animation, in particular, is quite adorable. To top off the old school charm, we have a wonderfully crafted chip tune-like soundtrack from Marc-Antoine Archier. For those of us that love the Game Boy, this game is a wonderful homage to everything that made games from that system amazing. Enough gushing about the atmosphere, however, on to the gameplay itself.
So, with all of this attention to detail for recreating a proper Game Boy experience, does the game live up to the expectation? Yes, and it does so nearly perfect. Save me Mr. Tako! does a wonderful job of blending clever level design with fun puzzles, and implements its designs and mechanics well. Mr. Tako will get various hats as you journey through the game, and each of these hats provides a new way of using up the ink meter. Mr. Tako’s default is to shoot ink from his mouth, which immobilized enemies and flips switches. Each time you use the ink, it will deplete from your meter, but it goes pretty slowly, and there are frequent enough refills (ink drops) that you shouldn’t run out. The first hat is, appropriately, the prince hat. This allows you to shoot arrows. There is also the ability to shoot hearts, bombs, and cats. There is one that allows you to leave flowers in your wake, and one that gives you an additional hit before dying- the latter of which is incredibly useful, especially as the game progresses and the difficulty increases drastically.
Save me Mr. Tako’s controls are very floaty, and as such it is very important that get a good grip on how high Mr. Tako is going to jump and his falling speed early on because this will become crucial to navigating the murky waters of the later stages. Just as you can image a throwback to the days of “Nintendo hard” would be, the game starts to become a bit cheap with its intention to present obstacles to your progress. There are fairly frequent checkpoints throughout the levels, and you will need them. Most of the game’s difficulty can be overcome by just paying close attention when coming into a new area so as to avoid “unexpected” enemy or hazard placement. This is also a good time to mention that you do have the ability to shift the camera to look around. Boss fights are satisfying, but frustrating. Thankfully, they’re not too frequent.
Overall, Save me Mr. Tako! is a wonderful homage to the great platformers of yore. Its throwback nature might not hold enough charm to sway anyone new over to endure the later stages when the difficulty spikes up, but it is a wonderfully crafted experience nonetheless. I’d definitely recommend it for anyone that likes their platformers hard and their sprites adorable.
