“Oh good, this is one of those games,” I thought to myself happily as I started up Marcus Eckert’s Wide Sky on my iPod Touch. The gorgeous, somewhat melancholy music and stark, four-colour imagery suggested that this would be one of those charming little independent mobile games that slips into the iTunes App Store quietly and slowly takes over the world.
The feeling continued as the game’s story unfolded. Here’s an excerpt from the game’s official description that captures the tone of the brief narrative quite nicely:
Hedgehogs are troubled spirits, and yet, they never fail to entertain the masses with their acrobatic feats. Many people don’t know, however, that hedgehogs aren’t born this way. Hedgehogs need to be trained and moulded into the tiny, fiscally responsible acrobats we know and love.
At that point everything about Wide Sky was shouting “Love me!” in my ear. I was fully prepared to give myself to this little hedgehog twirling game. Then I played it, or I tried to play it.
Wide Sky gifted me with a hedgehog, a present that’s always welcome. That hedgehog is equipped with a rope that can be extended from its body with a tap of the screen. The objective is to manoeuvre this hedgehog through the air, latching onto clouds with his rope in order to collect various objects and complete various tasks.
It would be delightful were the controls not so damn frustrating.
Wide Sky
Genre: hedgehog platformer
Developer: Marcus Eckert
Platform: iOS
Price: $0.99
Get Wide Sky on iTunes
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