Spunk and Moxie Review

Spunk and Moxie. If you're from the UK or Australia, behave yourself – this game was made by an American dev team, and (I wish I didn't have to explain this) in this instance, “spunk” means “vim” or “vigour”. Alright, we good? Okay. Spunk and Moxie is a 2D endless runner puzzle game from Chocolate Homunculus (soon to be renamed as Man Feelings) where you play as either one of two pieces of indiscriminate coloured goo – a green piece of goo called Spunk, and a pink piece called Moxie. Using only the left mouse button, you have to jump from point A to point B of a level, traversing obstacles and clearing tricky gaps as they come.

I have never sighed more playing a game than I did with Spunk and Moxie. The developers may try and fool you by presenting the idea that the game is made of equal parts spunk and moxie, but in actuality, it's boredom and frustration. In this one-button runner, you have to jump; a short click will be a hop, and a sustained click is a long jump. Players will use this mechanic to clear imaginative and never-before-seen traps in games like spike pits and saw blades. Adding to the mechanic is collision: if you hit anything solid, you'll turn to the opposite direction, creating a nauseating pinball effect as you try to recalibrate yourself to jump in the right direction. This set-up is not dissimilar to the horrendous Pavel Quest, which demonstrated that puzzles and endless running don't mix. This game is an extension of proof to that effect.

Having to constantly run in this game means that you'll have to work out puzzles on the move, but the real frustration sets in when you've long worked out the solution and you're fighting with the game to move your blob of sludge in exactly the right way. You have to make pixel perfect jumps, and hop and skip over obstacles with such precision, because even the slightest wobbly move will send you way back near the start of the level. You know exactly what has to be done but you can't accomplish it due to the game being unbelievably finicky and demanding, chipping away at what could have been a decent title.

However, when the game isn't causing you to swear out loud, it's making your very soul shrivel up into a cold, dead ball. Spunk and Moxie is just a soulless game. There's no spirit or joie de vivre in this title, no sense of accomplishment. The overwhelming clunkiness of the game will wear you down to the point where even success will only produce a dull “yay”. As such, and this is death for any game, Spunk and Moxie is not much fun at all despite the developer’s best attempts to drag the game out: there are 30 levels in total, and each level has seven medals to earn; you can win these by collecting all the gems in a stage, clearing it in a low time, or not sustaining any damage at all – standard stuff, but it doesn't jump start the game at all. Sure, it's all mostly technically proficient, but this whole game feels like such a wasted exercise.

Straight off the bat, Spunk and Moxie feels like it could be a mobile title with its clean visual presentation and streamlined controls. That’s because it was – ported from a 2013 Android release, this game is a simple reheating of the mobile title, handled by Tilt Studios. This is why it feels very out of place on the PC; this is a game definitely intended for short, sharp bursts of gameplay, and that doesn't really translate on home computers. As such, this is a port that doesn't really need to exist.

However, this game is not a total waste, as it had the decency to look good. The visuals are pleasingly chunky and vibrant, as if they've been ripped straight from the pages of a comic book. The colours bounce off the screen, giving it a very child-friendly look; perhaps that's the true audience of this game – too dull for mature gamers but better for kids.

This game made my life hurt. I could actually feel my life crying because I had to play this game. The most fun I had with the game was with the developer's splash screen, but my interest in the game just plummeted from there. This is a technically sound game – it works, but it's as soulless a game as you'll ever see.