From the person that created the Woodle Tree Adventures series is a game that takes on a much different play style. Suicide Guy is probably a misleading name, because suggesting this is a title about killing yourself is putting it very broadly. If that were you case, you should be able to find plenty of ways to off your character with weapons, hazards, and sheer negligence of common sense. It isn’t, though.
Story
Not to mention, Suicide Guy doesn’t even have the protagonist kill himself for real; it’s all a series of dreams that occur as he is sleeping on the couch. So why is he killing himself in his dreams? Simple: To wake up as soon as possible. As he takes his nap in real life, the beer bottle he was holding loosens from his hand and starts falling to the floor.
Graphics
ChubbyPixel has never been one to make anything too graphically detailed, but I do give Suicide Guy credit for what it does do with its cartoonish design. The little story there is is conveyed in a way that doesn’t feel out of place from a 3D-animated Internet short, and there are a lot of creative scenarios in each level. You could be riding a train through a desert in one stage, then find yourself in a lighthouse taunting whales in another. The game does enough to convey each situation effectively and the environments that house them are always interestingly varied.
Audio
Although the protagonist does have dialogue, the lines are never voiced. At best, he has grunts and similar noises. Oddly, the music is always played through an in-game radio rather than in a native manner for the background. Not that it takes away from the score, a lot of it fits well with the scenarios in question. If anything, some songs can get repetitive real fast. I had to turn off the radio in the office level because its casual sitcom-esque music was on such a short loop it got annoying fast.
Gameplay
Suicide Guy is a first-person game that is focused entirely on elaborate observation puzzles. In a way, it’s like a point ‘n click game. You’re not looking for a chainsaw to buzz your arm off; you’re looking for a way to daisy-chain the chainsaw into position so it falls right on you. Not sure why it has to be this complicated. Either way, that’s the name of the game, and it mostly works.
The different dilemmas in the game aren’t just visually interesting, but each one feels like it has its own mini-story to tell (that always ends up in a gleeful death). Certain kinds of deaths may be reused, but there is always a different objective to get to the same goal. Some of it could require some gathering up, like one level where you must put electrical appliances into a running bathtub then jump in it. Others can have their solutions instantly figured out given the right mindset, such as the level that just has a Portal gun in it.
Not everything is sound, though. Two main problems I have are the controls and some levels that have rather obtuse solutions. Mr. Guy feels inconsistent with weight; jumping from platform to platform can indeed feel like a fat guy hopping around as such. When he drags an object across the floor he does it effortlessly without any of that weight. He also feels like he just floats up when getting up from a ledge.
As for the latter problem, I could probably use the Jurassic Park-style level as the example; there’s a dinosaur egg in the lab and a T-Rex staring at you angrily outside the window. One would think “Oh, I gotta ruin this egg”, but how is a bit of a stretch. You’d think you could crack it, or heat it in the microwave, heat tester, and oven in a specific order. However, you’re actually supposed to constantly go back and forth between these machines and make sure the egg never cools; only then, at a high enough temperature, does it automatically crack for you. I don’t think that was explained well, whereas the better situations don’t need to give you as many details to let you know what to do.
Verdict
Nevertheless, I think Suicide Guy is worth checking out. The creativity in each of the levels outweighs the smaller shortcomings that may lurk within. It’s perhaps the best title ChubbyPixel has created so far, and I look forward to seeing how he could take things even further.
