Barnyard Blast: Swine Of The Night Review

I was looking for the video which introduced me to this game, but I can’t find it. It wasn’t a particularly good video, but it did introduce me to this game… and I appreciate it very much for that.

So. This game. This is a weird little game, but it’s also a great game. But it’s also not a great game? It’s hard to say.

This is what I would call a spoof game. Much like Cat Girl Without Salad is a spoof game. But this isn’t spoofing quite to that level. That game is highly spoof.

We are Robert Belmart. If that sounds something like Richter Belmont you’re not too far off the mark. Our little piglet Cliffy and his buddies went out to go and TP The Ancient Castle Ruled By Darkness and got themselves captured by the same very Darkness. So Mother sends us out to rescue the kids and pick up groceries while we’re out. That’s not a joke. It’s in the game. And that really tells you what level of humor we’re working with. References to other games and slightly silly dialog.

The game is, very obviously, influenced by the Castlevania series but also a little bit of Ghosts n’ Goblins. Game play is basic 2d side scrolling platformer. We move left to right or bottom to top doing battle with bats, mummified vegetables, trees, weird gopher things throwing explosives, and other such baddies. We have various weapons and abilities at our disposal in our fight against evil and collecting bread. We have a pistol, weak but infinite ammo and screen long rage. A close range but more powerful shotgun that requires ammo. Dynamite, very powerful but has a timer and is thrown – of course. And the most powerful weapon of them all, a whip.

The whip requires “ammo” of which we have different types. Let’s talk about all of that here for a second. We have health, not much and drops are pretty rare but at least it’s there. We have “ammo” which is shared by the whip and abilities. This is represented by a blue bar. The shotgun and dynamite each have their own ammo. Finally we have a Mario/Kirby coin/star system, collecting 100 stars will grant an extra life.

As we progress through the game we unlock abilities such as extra damage, increased speed, better jumping, and health regeneration. These abilities are semi passive. You turn them on and off and they burn up that blue bar which is also whip ammo.

Not a bad system really. The abilities really do help a lot. The health regeneration is pretty slow though so don’t expect it to save you in the heat of battle.

The graphics are, overall, pretty good. The character portraits are varied and expressive. The enemy designs are kinda bland but that’s not really a bad thing. Backgrounds are pretty good but stage design is also a little bland. It’s a difficult design philosophy to pin down. The other thing is it feels like there were two different design crews working on this. Some of the enemies, like the one eyed bats and the veggy mummies all kind of have a shared style but some of the bosses and other enemies look like they were pulled out of a different game entirely. It’s a weird juxtaposition between some almost claymation style enemies and more traditional video game sprites. Hard to pin down.

Music is similarly varied. Some of it is quite good and some of it is not so good. It all fits the situation just fine but the quality varies quite a bit. The music in the little dialog segments is probably what I enjoyed the most. Some of the stage music is good. Boss music and map music is fairly poor. Still, it all works with the experience that the game is presenting so it’s not like it’s out of place or anything like that.

It’s a fun game. The writing and scenarios are good. The gameplay is standard but challenging. The graphics will keep you guessing and the music is, usually, good enough to get you through the day. If you like the most classic style 2d action platformers, give this game a try. But maybe don’t expect to fall in love with it.