We like casual games round these here parts. We really do. Whatever the format, whatever the platform, we're there. A quick five minutes during elevenses, a full half hour blast at lunchtime, or even a quick attempt over coffee and biscuits at four o'clock, we're willing to try anything.
Which makes our recent discovery - combining food AND games - even more peculiar Cult Scottish biscuit company Tunnocks, creator of the hugely popular Caramel Wafer, Caramel Log and the peerless Teacake and Snowball has created a couple of unique ONLINE GAMES to help promote their range of teatime treats.
The only problem is, while they're strangely brilliant, they're also creepier than your Mum marrying an evil clown called Strangles ("You can call me, 'Daddy Strangles', son!")
They feature the Tunnocks mascot, a young, rosy-cheeked fellow who for time out of mind has emphasised clean, healthy living and an appreciation for chocolate covered biscuit-based snacks.
While we have a strict 'No Reviews' policy here on SG.biz, we have to point you towards these gems and fill you in on them - because, like Tunnocks themselves, they're rebels out of left field obeying no rules but their own. Plus it's Scottish and games-related and it means we can avoid press releases for half an hour or so.
The first game, Snack Hunt, is a PAC-MAN clone. You control a side-on view of Biscuit Lad. The maze has a Teacake at each corner and you've got to scoff them all before the timer runs out. Bizarrely the sound effects have no reflection whatsoever on the treats in question. The small red 'pills' which dot the maze are swallowed with a sound effect which we're pretty certain is a Kettle or possibly Tortilla Chip. However, if you make to to one of the Teacakes (which are, remember, a thin chocolatey biscuit base, covered liberally with a hemisphere of soft mallow and then coated in a deliciously thin layer of real milk chocolate); then you get a crunch - which is unmistakably the sound of an apple being eaten. Unless it's to indicate you've just eaten the foil wrapper as well of course.
All in all, it's a bit strange. Not a whole lot of fun and has yet to convince us to rush out and buy a packet of biscuits. Yet compelling.
The other game is simply called Snowballs. In this game, Biscuit Lad must catch the delicious Tunnock's Snowballs and avoid the nasty, cold real snowballs, which are not as tasty. Left and Right arrows control your movement. You have to collect 10 Snowballs in 30 seconds, though this is sort of random. We'll swear we didn't miss a one, but still failed (on level one) because the game didn't actually drop 10 lovely Snowballs.
However, this quirk aside, it's worth playing for the extraordinarily sinister atmosphere. It's like a casual game directed by David Lynch. Our hero, the apple-cheeked youth, in his red wellies, scarf and gloves combo. Set in a strangely sterile landscape where the only other occupants are two sheep and a stick-wielding Snowman, who broods menacingly in one corner, promising punishment and retribution for the weak and uncoordinated.
Who's dropping the snowballs? They can't be flakes - THEY'RE quite small and hang suspended in the air. Is it God? Is Biscuit Lad in purgatory, or worse still, in hell itself? Is he being teased and ridiculed by a vast, wicked intelligence? Is it taunting him by not sending down the required number of biscuits in the pitifully small amount time he has? Or is it a Zen exercise in which the mind has space to expand and contemplate while the body completes an endless task (wax on, wax off).
It's a game which asks for more questions than it answers...
All in all, it's a very strange place. The whole site looks like it was designed by the team behind Flash Gordon and the games themselves have the same sort of feel as 1970's Hammer Horror movies - with the same unexpected, visceral appeal.
Biscuit Lad turns out to be an unlikely hero of this eerie online universe and could do very well as the star of his own series of games; or at least starting out as a sidekick (Kane & Lynch & Biscuit Lad for example).
While not everything Scottish and game related can be said to shine like a beacon in the darkness of the shores of gaming, Tunnocks should be congratulated for bringing something new and terrifying to the casual gaming world.
