Freddy Farmer Game Review + Coming Soon...

Hello all,

Firstly, apologies for not ‘sub stacking’ lately. I’ve been chomping at the bit to write up the completion of the ‘NES In A 3D Printed Brick’ - but, reasons…

It’s been hellish at my house for the past few weeks, having building work done on the entire bottom floor, which still isn’t going well. I also had flu while preparing one of the rooms before the work was due to start (which I had to work through) I also had extreme dehydration and my wife had to go into hospital for potential sepsis occurring from a very minor accident…

…Aaaaaanyhoo…

Freddy Farmer

I was sent a Nintendo Switch code for a brand new Indie game. ‘Freddy Farmer’ from Catcade games. This pre-release came from my friends at Flynn’s Arcade. They are the publishers behind Donut Dodo, Murtop, Eternum, Cash Cow, Super Spy Raccoon and this new ‘un. They asked me to help promote it and I have been sharing it and reposting other posts on da socialz to let people know about it. I also said I’d do a review on here for them. It’s currently only £4.99, so kinda like the pocket money cassette games we used to buy when we were kiddies in the UK for the 8 bit computers.

It was released on the 1st March on Switch and the Steam PC version will be along on the 4th.

It is a downloaded game from the Nintendo E-store and I don’t think physical versions are going to be made?

Check out the trailer -

Here’s the marketing blurb -

· High-quality pixel art graphics with excellent 16-bit animations.

· 5 different Worlds with 7 levels in each of them.

· More than 25 types of enemies with their own characteristics.

· 2 different endings for the story.

· 5 different 8-bit style bonus levels that unlock mini-games.

· Galleries and unlockable extras.

· 3 game modes, each one more challenging than the last.

· Various cameos and references to cinema, literature and video games.

· Enjoy the CRT filter and 4:3 camera for a total retro experience.

· Local and global leaderboards for increased bragging rights!

I can’t argue with any of the above. The graphics are lovely. Reminiscent of SNES / Super Famicom from the 90’s. I’m not sure about the mini games, the Galleries and the game modes though, as I haven’t unlocked them yet. Curse those unlockables!!!

I did, however upload my score with the Flynn’s Arcade QR code that you get displayed on your screen. I’m sure my meagre fifty thousand-ish score will be wiped off the global table before I’ve written this…

I like the 4:3 or 16:9 aspect ratios. 4:3 FTW! The CRT filters aren’t the best I’ve seen - but that could be to do with the stupidly large modern TV I have my Switch attached to. An actual CRT screen with my Switch would be the tippety top, but I don’t think Tears of the Kingdom would work very well, sadly.

Gameplay

Controls - D pad or Analog stick to control our intrepid farmer and a single button to make him jump. Up n Down the ladders and DOWN to duck. That’s it! No millions of buttons needed and no camera controls - just how I like it!

It’s the usual scenario - poor old Freddy Farmer has had his daughter abducted by an evil dragon. Stupid Dragons. To get her back, you need to travel around the kingdom collecting spell ingredients from platform levels to get the wizard cat (yes, really) to free the girl from the baddie dragon (I presume). Additionally, the ingredients must be collected IN ORDER to fill the magic potion vials. There are 5 levels per area with another two crossed out. I’m thinking they may have something to do with the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ endings? This isn’t clear. It is also not that clear what happens if you don’t clear the area ‘properly’. You do, however finish the level if you miss any or all of the ingredients in the correct order, but your vial won’t be filled with that fine magic, er, stuff. Freddy has a bit of a cry if this happens. On Freddy’s journey he will, of course encounter evil things hell bent on stopping him grabbing the cauldron fodder and rendering him daughterless. These evil things really are that. Sometimes plain annoying and meanly difficult on some levels. More on this in my summing up later…

There are 6 areas -

• Forest

• The Mines

• The Mountains

• The Cemetery

• The Castle

• The Tower (requires a certain number of potions to enter)

The levels can be done in whatever order you like, which is nice. This gives you a good idea of the overall game and also the difficulty that’s coming for you. It also gives you a bit of a break of playing the same levels over and over if you miss some of the ingredients in order and you’re going for a perfect run. If you do miss the order, you can do the entire level again and just whizz through the levels you HAVE done correctly without getting the ingredients in order. Try to remember which level you DO need to do correctly, though…

This game is similar to the fantastic Darkula and the recent Toxic Tomb, both from Locomalito games (another Spanish game Indie maker. Catcade are also Spanish, BTW). Donut Dodo also shares similar gameplay with those games.

(After watching the above short GIF (not viewable with substack, but HERE), I have realised you can duck (quack) the projectiles from the armed projectile baddies. Doh.

Positives (according to me)

Excellent pixel art and music. Lovely cut scene at the start. I’m also expecting some more as I progress through the game.

Similar game play to other great, similar games. Catcade have used a tried and trusted set of game mechanics, which work well in this title.

Good number of levels with a ton of unlockables and extras.

A nice set of extras with the CRT effects and global hi score table. I’m looking forward to unlocking some of the mini games, especially (what looks like to me) a gameboy looking version of Locomalito’s Darkula. You can see this very briefly in the trailer video above.

Pricing - this is a massive bargain at £4.99 (UK)

Excellent attention to detail in the presentation.

Cute achievements - who doesn’t love achieving?

Negatives (also according to me)

Gets difficult a bit too quick. I’m not enjoying the fact that modern game makers seem to think old games were incredibly difficult. They were on a bit of the tough side, due to no save games, infinite credits etc, but c’mon guys!

A similar criticism here from me as with Donut Dodo - when you ascend or descend a ladder, you cannot reverse the move. If a baddie is there when you finish your move, you’re toast. There’s no going back. Dead. This is a particular problem on Farmer Freddy, as some of the ladders are quite long and it’s too difficult to time his moves sometimes.

You can get into dead ends with no outcome but to lose a life. It’s kinda your own fault if this happens, but seems a bit off.

The collectible ingredients are sometimes hard to see with such detailed (and beautiful) level layouts. These are also sometimes easy to grab when you don’t want them too, ruining your level run (and bonus points)

Some of the baddies are just plain ba$tards! Really difficult to avoid and ganging up on you with a ferocity that seems a bit too hard - and this is on the first difficulty (EASY). The game has two more difficulty levels (??? out at first), which I’m presuming are HARD and MIRROR. It mentions a mirrored mode in the achievements.

Hypothesis (oooh, fancy!)

This game is right up my street. Looks great, is simple to get into and then, well - HARD. I think it’s hampered by the difficulty level. Maybe it’s just me, but I’d like to have been about half way through the whole game by now. My biggest bugbear is not seeing the collectibles easily enough. I gave some gameplay comments to the authors and I’ve been told some of these will be remedied when the Steam PC version is released. I think the Switch version will have a version update - we will have to see what they have altered.

As I’m a seasoned gamer (OLD) I’d also have liked to see a true 8 bit graphical style added to the options, maybe with an 8 bit style. I know the ZX Spectrum was big in Spain, so maybe the game makers could have done a Spectrum 8 colour option with colour clash! Or maybe multi brown sprites a la C64 stylee!

Overall, a polished game that will have the score chasers and hundred percenters happy (you know who you are). This game requires practise and some patience to play properly. If you like SNES / Megadrive style games, you will probably like this and for less than a fiver, you can’t go wrong.

LAST WORD - I would have paid a fiver for it and been very happy.

Coming up soon…

Final part of the ‘NES classic in a handheld’ There has been a massive change in the hardware. With that a turnaround in the brief of what I wanted to make, but - a working and finished console that I am happy with and eager to share with y’all!

A Neo Geo CD top loader to fix and make nice. SPOILER - it’s a total basket case at the moment.

A few updates from past tinkerings.

A really old console to spruce up (from the 70s and I bet a lot of you haven’t even seen one of these before!)

A childhood console to mess with (my very first video game console that plugged into the tellybox)

Some upgrades for my Donkey Kong cabaret arcade cabinet.