Octodad: Dadliest Catch arrives on Android
Octodad: Dadliest Catch made quite the splash when it hit the PC and consoles. Now it may have found its ideal platform on Android.
Octodad is a brilliant fusion of several different genres. First and foremost, it’s technically a stealth game. You play as a cephalopod masquerading as a loving father with an inexplicably paper-thin disguise. Life is an endless struggle for Octodad, who must maneuver everyday situations–like getting dressed–without arousing the suspicion of other humans.
Stealth mechanics, which usually require care and precision, seem to make odd bedfellows with fumblecore control schemes. Like QWOP and Surgeon Simulator, Octodad employs deliberately unwieldy controls. In this case, using our hero’s many wiggly tentacles as functional arms and legs serves to make just walking in a straight line a challenge.
The natural tension between these two genres makes the game naturally hilarious. The creators know exactly what they’re up to as well, littering the playing field with objects to stumble over and slapstick setups. Walking is already difficult, and then you notice the banana peels. Of course there would be banana peels.
Paired with intriguing gameplay is a surprisingly well-wrought story that’s both heartfelt and taut with constant tension. Our cephalopodian protagonist is genuinely sympathetic, and it falls to him to keep up his disguise under the noses of not only his family and passersby, but of expert-aquatic-lifeform-identifying marine biologists. What is a fun day trip to the aquarium the rest of the family is a terrifying covert operation into the heart of the enemy base for Octodad.
On the Android, the controls are initially a bit daunting, but by the end of the first level they become second-nature. The clumsy keyboard-and-mouse scheme of the PC gives way to a much more fluid touch-screen interface in which you swap between walking and… tentacling… with a simple two-finger tap.
Octodad: Dadliest Catch runs $5 dollars in the Google Play Store, and it’s well worth the money. It’s a short but well-crafted game, and those who despise the free-to-play/pay-to-win models dominating the market will rejoice. Here is a quality game that you pay for once and it doesn’t bug you any more after that. That said, many low-end devices may struggle with this game. Octodad isn’t exclusive to Tegra-powered devices, but the description in the Play Store recommends devices with more than a gig of RAM.
What are your thoughts? Did you play Octodad when it first came out? Will you be buying the Android version? Let us know in the comments!
AIVAnet 