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Boo! Greedy Kid Indie Video Game Review

Boo! Greedy Kid Indie Video Game Review

When I first saw Boo! Greedy Kid I didn’t really know what to think. A game about scaring old people to steal their money to buy soda is something I never thought I would see in a video game. Then there is the fact that you can control parts of the game by screaming into your microphone. Boo! Greedy Kid didn’t look like your typical video game but it looked interesting enough that I wanted to try it out.

A basic level in Boo! Greedy Kid goes as follows. Each level places you in a section of a building that features a bunch of different rooms connected by doors. Your goal is to sneak behind the older residents and yell at them in order to scare them into dropping their money and “passing out”. Some of them can be scared with one yell while others take two yells. Once you have scared all of the residents and taken their money, you can enter the elevator which takes you to the next level. Each level is quite short usually only taking 30 seconds to a minute to complete.

Along with scaring the older residents there are a couple other mechanics in the game. The game has medic characters who will revive the passed out residents when they encounter them. There are also police/SWAT members which try to stop you by either beating or shooting you. To avoid their attacks and the attacks of the angry residents you can hide in pieces of furniture or you can roll past them. You can also twerk your butt in order to get characters to chase after you. If at any time you lose your three hearts you have to restart the level.

When I first saw Boo! Greedy Kid the thing that jumped out to me was the unique control scheme. The game actually allows you to control your character’s scream by actually screaming into your microphone. I have to give the developers credit for coming up with a unique gameplay mechanic because I can’t think of another game that is controlled by screaming into your microphone. I can’t really comment on how well it works though since while I like strange game concepts, constantly screaming into a microphone was a little too far for me. The good news is that you can just play the game with a normal controller/keyboard and use a button to scream instead of screaming yourself. Other than screaming the game has controls for moving left and right, entering doors and hiding, dodging, and twerking your butt. I can’t comment on how well the screaming mechanic works but the game controls quite well using a normal controller.

If I had to break down what it feels like playing Boo! Greedy Kid it kind of feels like the type of game that you could have found in an arcade. While the mechanics and controls are more refined than a traditional arcade game, the style of gameplay really reminds me of arcade games. For the most part this works well for the game. The game plays quick and is fun. People who like quick twitch type arcade games will probably really like the game. The only problem is that since the game only has a couple mechanics it can get a little repetitive after a while. I mostly broke the game down into 30 minute to an hour sessions since otherwise I think the game could have gotten repetitive.

People who hate pixel art will disagree with me on this but I think the artwork in Boo! Greedy Kid is quite good. While the game mostly repeats the same characters for the whole game, they are all well done. For pixel art characters they show quite a bit of detail and the characters’ animations are well done.  People who like pixel art will probably really like the art style of the game.

While I liked the artwork, I don’t know if the same can be said for the game’s story. Simply put the story is not really a selling point for the game. You play as a young boy that wants to buy a soda from a vending machine but doesn’t have enough money. He then for some reason decides to go around what looks like a senior citizen center scaring old people until he can steal their money. Unless everything changes when you unlock the secret ending, the main character is kind of a jerk. The fact that the story is not great is not surprising since it doesn’t really play a big role in the game. Literally the only levels that actually feature any story are the first and the last. Boo! Greedy Kid is just one of those games where you just have to think, “Does it really matter why I am doing this?”

How much playtime you get out of Boo! Greey Kid is going to come down to a couple factors. The main game includes 100 levels. I ended up beating all of the levels in 2-3 hours. When playing the game I ended up getting two stars in around a half to two-thirds of the levels, three stars in probably ten of the levels, and one star in the rest of the levels. I bring this up because if you want to get three stars in all of the levels it could add quite a bit of time to the game. The game even has a second ending for players that are able to get three stars in every level.

Getting three stars in some of the levels is going to be a challenge though. In each of the levels you get one star for completing the level, one star for finishing it within a certain amount of time, and another for collecting all of the money in the level. In order to get all of the money in a level you can’t get hit by anything after you have collected money since each hit will make you lose some of your money. The time limit to get the star is pretty tight where you have to move as quickly as possible to finish in time.  The reason that I only got two stars in most of the levels is that I mostly focused on getting all of the money in each level and didn’t really worry about the time. I have never been a big fan of speed running levels and you have to move quickly to get the star for time in each level. To get three stars in most of the levels you will have to either perfect them or get lucky.

I bring up getting lucky since there is a degree of luck involved in Boo! Greedy Kid. The luck in Boo! Greedy Kid comes from how the characters move. The movement of both the characters you have to scare and the cops seem to be pretty randomized. You can have some control over the characters movement using your butt twerks but there will be times where you can’t do anything to stop them from ruining your plans. In general I like that the character’s movements are randomized because it adds more variety to the game and they feel more like people than robots. The random movements do impact your chances of getting all of the stars though. It doesn’t really impact getting all of the money in a level because you can always take your time. It has a big impact on finishing the level in time though. If the characters aren’t cooperating you have next to no chance of finishing a level quick enough to get the star.

I think what is going to impact the length the most is how big of community the game attracts. Boo! Greedy Kid includes a level editor so people are able to create their own levels. If a lot of people start designing their own levels this could add a lot of replay value to the game. All of the levels that are designed aren’t going to be great but creative designers could add a bunch of worthwhile levels to the game which could really extend the length of the game.

As far as recommendations it comes down to whether the premise intrigues you. If you don’t really care for action/arcade style games I don’t see you getting a lot out of Boo! Greedy Kid. If you like this style of game though I would recommend picking it up.

We at Geeky Hobbies would like to thank Flying Oak Games and Plug In Digital for the review copy of Boo! Greedy Kid used for this review. Other than receiving a free copy of the game to review, we at Geeky Hobbies received no other compensation for this review.