Cute Things Dying Violently Review

After many hours of playtime, I can safely say that Cute Things Dying Violently is the Angry Birds of the Xbox Live Indie Section. That may be a pretty big thing to say considering how gigantically popular the Angry Birds series is, but it’s true. While Cute Things Dying Violently may have a much more mature style to it, the gameplay is still as addictive as ever and just like Angry Birds, you fling animals.

When I first saw some screenshots for the game, I thought it was going to be like Super Meat Boy but with cute things. You would run through various levels and then whenever you died, the cute things would die violently. Instead, it is closer to an Angry Birds and Lemmings crossover that still involves violent deaths.

The goal of each level is to fling as many of the cute things as you can into an open elevator. You do this by putting a giant circle over the cute thing, pulling back with the right thumbstick, and aiming it towards the elevator. The game will of course start out easy, meaning that you need only be careful of shooting the cute things off of the edge as you aim for the elevator. Then, you quickly have to worry about spinning saw blades that kill anything with the slightest touch and that is where the dying violently comes into play.

Everytime you hit one of those blades, your little round character will be split into two equal pieces and blood will spray everywhere. Seeing something so cute die so violently really makes you lose a piece of your soul but it also does something else, it makes you do better. Whereas in a game like Angry Birds where it doesn’t really matter if one of your birds misses. This made me really focus on what I was doing and aside from the soul squashing, this game is amazing.

What I really enjoyed with the game was that the difficulty did not ramp up too quickly. There is a slow (but not too slow) progression through all of the games 60 levels. Every few levels will introduce something new to the game such as springs, fans, bubbles, bouncing the cute things off walls, and buttons that turn those mechanisms on and off. It really was astounding to see how much variation there was level to level and just how expertly some of the levels came together.

In addition to each of those 60 levels, there are even special levels that you unlock by doing certain ‘Achieve Mints’. The first one that you will unlock is pretty sadistic as it requires you to get every spinning blade in the level covered with blood and they get even crazier from there on in. Luckily, if you don’t like seeing the cute things die, there is an included level editor so you can create a safe level that doesn’t involve anything dying.

Lastly, this game is hilarious. The boss that you fight at the end of every stage says some of the funniest things ever and the hints that are scattered throughout the levels are all written brilliantly. Combine this with the fact that the cute things say things like ‘I love life’ right before you kill them and they even swear at you when you kill their friends! This game had me laughing almost all the way through with its dark humour.

As I said in the beginning, Cute Things Dying Violently is the Angry Birds of the Xbox Live Indie Section. It is extremely addictive, super fun, hilarious, there are tons of levels, and it is only a $1. Put simply: You have to download this game!

Cute Things Dying Violently was reviewed with a copy provided by Apathy Works. You can download the game in the Xbox Live Indie section for 80 MSP ($1).

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