Once upon a time, there were three unlikely heroes who escaped disaster out of sheer laziness. Now the king - who is also a lazy shit - has tasked them with saving both princess and country. With magical chalk in hand, Jack and his fellow layabouts Jean & RB93 must stand against Queen Wagamama's misfits. Surviving 21 stages of line-drawing madness will take a steady hand as well as tons of memorization. Cacoma Knight in Bizyland is somewhere between undercooked and half-baked. Qix-likes are always rare and pleasant to see, but I just can't connect with this one.
Qix is an arcade classic about drawing lines to fill space. Simple to grasp, hard to master, and ripe for countless iteratives. DaTaM Polystar's take on the formula involves having multiple enemy types as well as hidden power-ups to uncover. Basically, your chosen hero is never safe. Staying on completed lines or the surrounding wall puts them at risk of getting bashed by small goons. While drawing, they're hounded by larger foes capable of flight. Maybe they also have some dangerous objects to hurl about. Whatever the case, a life is lost if a projectile or flying enemy collides with the unfinished line. Each stage has 1-4 treasure chests. Their locations are fixed, and the power-ups they contain are a huge help. However, a chest can't be opened until one of the heroes draws a block around them.
I'd ask why the game deemed it necessary to hide the treasure, but it's a question I might already know the answer to. Cacoma Knight expects players to memorize the chest locations, otherwise the game wouldn't have much depth. If there was a shiny sparkle, a clue hidden in the background, or anything that aroused suspicion, then players would quickly figure out the perfect drawing route. Also, stages are easy to clear with the right power-up. The bicep grants temporary invincibility, boots provide super speed, and 1ups do exactly what 1ups do. Since extra lives can't be obtained with points, there's even more of an incentive to just grab the chests.
While there are three playable characters to choose from, they suffer from having either strengths or weaknesses. Jean's drawing speed is ridiculous. She can zip across the field and clear huge chunks of the stage in a fraction of the time it'd take Jack. Her maneuverability in mid-draw isn't good, but she almost never has to worry about her line getting struck by a foe. Jack is the balanced choice. He's better at drawing, but so much slower. Finesse doesn't mean much in a game where the only good stuff is hidden treasure. One of the interesting but also irrelevant mechanics is that a few enemies can be destroyed if they're caught inside a space that has just been filled. This is something that Jack might be able to get some use out of, if destroying enemies served any real purpose. They respawn in less than three seconds, and it's impossible to get rid of anything noteworthy. Still, at least Jack isn't RB93. Talk about a sad joke. What this criminally slow piece of junk needed was a unique feature. Maybe he doesn't get killed when an enemy touches his unfinished line, something like that. Nope. It's just a trash-ass robot for the psychopaths who drag themselves across rivers of lava and thumbtacks.
Cacoma Knight in Bizyland never finds the perfect difficulty balance either. Setting aside the fact that one's chances of reaching the end are strongly influenced by the number of 1ups they luck into, most stages can be cleared without much effort. It isn't until the final three stages where the deaths have a serious chance of piling up. Those goons that walk across lines start moving awfully fast. Getting blindsided by them becomes an overly frequent occurrence. Next thing that happens is a giant slime controls half the screen with its death-globs. Predictably, the final stage is harder than the rest of the game. Much like the hidden treasure, it's just a cheap method to extend playtime.
Ultimately, this Qix-like isn't for me. It plays fine and has some whimsical charm, but the game feels like it's liable to punish me for trying to learn its intricacies. Pick the fastest character. Grab a stack of cheat sheets. Knock the entire thing out in 20 minutes.
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| Bit odd that I have to pause the game to see how many lives are remaining. |
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