Dummy Defense

Melvin looks askance. He always looks askance. I think his face was built that way. He continues to look askance as the meteors start raining from space and demolish the flimsy structure he's hiding in. The look doesn't even fold as a last asteroid bounces his decapitated head into orbit.

The joy in Dummy Defense isn't in successfully defending your dummy: it's in watching his ragdoll body getting battered.

The first thing you do in any of Dummy Defense's 25 levels, is just press the 'play' button to see how crash test dummy Melvin (and/or Kelvin, his evil doppleganger) is punished by the physics engine this time. Sometimes he's battered by asteroids, sometimes giant hammers. Often it's boulders or bombs.

The levels are tough, but they don't repeat themselves too much. You tend to have two objectives - first, to keep Melvin alive and, second, to kill Kelvin. You do this by building defensive structures around the dummy in the vain hope that he won't die.

Test subjects

As the environments are mostly lethal, and as Melvin is a delicate flower (for a crash test dummy), this is relatively tough. Harder still is reaching the three-star rating by using the fewest possible materials. Hardest of all is getting yourself onto the in-game daily or all-time leaderboards, which often involves using tricks of physics.

The design of the levels is relatively slick, but the interface is somewhat obtuse. It's not immediately obvious that there's a leaderboard, and the similarly tucked-away test mode, while fun, is useless when you can run the level so easily. You can also send your level blueprints by mail - an effort at social integration.

There are only 25 levels in the game - not much in comparison to say, Cut the Rope, but an excellent start. Dummy Defense is strong in terms of core gameplay, and relatively weak in terms of everything else. Thankfully, its core is so well-built that its peripheral failings don't knock it down.