Welcome once again to PCGamesN’s Spotlight on Greenlight, our regular Saturday feature where we look at the best and the most interesting Greenlight games that are hoping to make their way onto Steam. We’ve already looked at dozens of other titles in weeks past, so do take a look at our back catalogue.
Looking like it’s stepped out of a 30s cinema, Fleish & Cherry in Crazy Hotel is styled after the early Disney cartoons, with all their bounce and exuberant animation, but it also looks to the past for its mechanical influences, splitting itself between point’n’click games and isometric adventures.
Fleish & Cherry starts with a kidnapping: the villainous Mr. Mintz has had it up to here ‘¬’ with superstar Fleish the Fox taking all the starring roles in Toonville’s new films and so nabs him, tying him up for devious purposes atop a five story hotel. You take control of Cherry, Fleish’s girlfriend and regular damsel in distress to this time save Fleish from trouble.
Spreading its action across five stages – each floor of the hotel – you’ll have Cherry overcome point’n’click style puzzles akin to Monkey Island and Day of the Tentacle, finding ways round guards through conversation and judicious combinations of random objects. You’ll also be fighting enemies and sidestepping environmental hazards in a isometric grid view, not dissimilar from the early Zelda games.
Using the 30s cartoon style as a model, all of Cherry’s abilities are derived from that style of surreal reality, think the Who Framed Roger Rabbit’s Acme supplies skew on the world. So, one example you can see in the trailer is calling on an anvil to fall from the skies, flattening Cherry to the point that she can enter the air ducts.
It isn’t clear whether these skills are ones you will be using repeatedly through the game or are unique to each puzzle. While using an anvil to flatten yourself once is funny it may lose its charm after the third or fourth time. Though, if they are single use then they’d tie in quite well to the game’s point’n’click puzzle solving elements.
It’s the sort of skewed cartoon logic where an anvil crushing you is a solution to problem which makes Fleish & Cherry such an appealing game, mechanically it seems a relatively simple hybrid of the adventure game with point’n’click style conversations but if all those familiar features are being infused with a vein of surreal humour then it could well revitalise them.
The humour of the game could end up being its biggest draw; the directness of the humour in old cartoons is particularly charming, and if developer Red Little House Studios can capture it then Fleish & Cherry could become something truly special.
Currently, Fleish & Cherry is not just going through Greenlight but also an Indiegogo campaign. Developer Red Little House are hoping to raise €29,000 to complete development and with more than a month left on the calendar they’ve so far raised more than €4,000. Considering the lowest tier, €8, nets you a copy of the game on its release then it’s quite easy to lend your support and help fund its completion. But if that’s a little steep you can, of course, also give them a boost by giving it a thumbs up on Steam Greenlight.