Have you ever wanted to be a slug that is also a courier? No? Me neither. But have you ever wanted to be a slug that’s a cosmic courier? Also no, but once I heard there was a game called Kickback Slug Cosmic Courier, I kind of did want to be a cosmic slug. Like a game I didn’t know I wanted until I heard about it. Space slug – how can it not be good?!
Slippy is a Slug in Space
Yeah, that’s right. Your slug’s name is Slippy. The game just keeps sounding better, right? It’s a simple game, you shoot in one direction and fly in another. However, Slippy (AKA, you) has its fair share of challenges ahead as you encounter increasingly difficult obstacles. The slugs don’t like spikes in space, and you’ll need to navigate carefully to avoid them.
Kickback Slug: Cosmic Courier is an avoidance-based physics game where you must exploit the kickback of your arsenal to navigate around. Oh, and you have to pick up the occasional parcel too.
If all that sounds ridiculous, it’s because it is. And the game leans into that, adding some great humour to conversations. And it looks great with a lovely cartoon feel to it.
The Story
Slippy and Mr McFly are dedicated delivery drivers for the largest intergalactic trader of goods. They take pride in their work and strive to meet high standards. However, their routine shift and the possibility of being named employees of the month are in jeopardy when their ship experiences a mechanical failure. And you might have guessed, but they crash land on a planet. To make matters worse, all of the parcels they were transporting have been lost and are now scattered across the planet’s surface.
And that’s it. The fate of parcel delivery for the galaxy is in your hands. You need to find all those parcels – but not look in them, as you’re professionals – so you can get them delivered.
The Gameplay
This game is bloody difficult – let’s just get that out of the way now.
In Kickback Slug: Cosmic Courier, your objective is to navigate through several stages, find a switch and exit through a portal. This might sound like a walk in the park, but it is not. The game is physics-based, which means you will have to deal with the challenges of gravity by using your jetpack and gun while racing against the clock and the environment.
Holding down the B button will launch Slippy around (as opposed to tapping to quick shoot), but there is a slight sluggish feeling as if you’re underwater. However, that’s not the only challenge you’ll face. To move forward, you must hold the left analogue stick in the opposite direction and “bounce” your way around the stages to avoid all the obstacles. And that takes some getting used to.
If you really want a challenge, you can also do a timed session. You’d have to be rather mad to do that, but some people enjoy that level of pain. It gets tricky enough without having a time restriction – there were a few times I accidentally shot the timer, which starts it going and didn’t stand a chance in then getting where I needed to go in time.
The good news, though, is that respawning is super quick. Sure, you start the level again, but they’re not long levels, and you want quick loading in a game like this.
Conclusion
Despite what the game looks like, this is not a game for casuals. It starts off quite friendly, but the more you play, the more you realise the fun has only just started. Depending on what you define as fun, that is.
With five biomes, consisting of nine stages and a boss battle, you can was through the game fairly quickly, even if you do die a lot. You just need to train your brain to point your gun in the opposite direction. Which isn’t that easy when you still need to occasionally aim your gun where you want to shoot, not in the opposite direction of where you want to go.
And don’t even get me started on the bosses. “Oh, that was easy,” I said at one point. Only for the boss to heal, and everything I’d done before becomes irrelevant as their patterns change, and I die again. But the good news there is that their health doesn’t change when you die. So there’s that.
With plenty of levels, bonus levels, great humour scattered throughout, and some whimsical art choices, Kickback Slug: Cosmic Courier is a demanding but fun game. It gets more rewarding the more you play, and you can have a laugh whilst you do so. It’s a game that doesn’t take itself too seriously, which is good because it’s a slug in space delivering parcels. How serious could that really be?
I rate Kickback Slug: Cosmic Courier an incredibly well-deserved 9/10. At just £11.99 on the Nintendo eShop, it’s great value for money.
