Space Otter Charlie

Otter fact: Otters would probably fair very well in zero-G environments due to their keen sense of balance, orientation and fantastic puzzle solving abilities, with their dextile hands capable of tool use, one can imagine with a little more brains, they might be next in line to inherit the earth.. or the stars! Anywho, Space Otter Charlie manages to combine zero-G platforming, physics puzzling and shooting in a very cohesive and engaging manner, sometimes surprising you with the pressure it can put on you to apply all you've learnt, as well as flex those puzzle solving muscles. What did surprise me, as someone whose played tonnes of action-shooters, is how creative some of the monsters you encounter are, some will have you sweating while you are trying to solve puzzles, there is one.. pixelated foe, I wont spoil, that has a bit of a clever rhythm to fighting it. I wasn't expecting intense combat, but the cleverness of some enemy design was very welcome. What really is the appeal of the game however isn't its shooting at monsters per say, in fact a lot of the shooting you'll be doing is for puzzle solving, its the zero-g physics puzzling! A lot of the game revolves around manipulating the velocity and trajectory of certain items, and Charlie the otter himself, to solve and remove certain barriers, often as simple as pushing a block into an inaccessible button, or some that involve you riding an item, whilst shooting buttons to enable and disable environmental hazards and pulling of some quick thinking whilst doing it. Often solving these, especially the more time sensitive and execution oriented puzzles, leads to that huge satisfaction, classic puzzle game feel of "aha, thats how you do it" and then "wahoo!!! i did it!" Whilst I enjoyed my time with this game, it was quite short, and its sad to see the game didn't gain much traction, because i'd very much enjoy a sequel, possibly even a 3d one! Ahh, but at least I get to be the one to have enjoyed it, and maybe if i can tell more people about it, the game will get the traction it needs for the developers to know, we want some more please!!