CrazyBomb

I’ve just had one of those brain-frying experiences that can only come from one of two possible sources.

The first scenario involves having a psychotic breakdown, possibly fuelled by copious amounts of mind-altering drugs, whereas the second involves playing a video game.

Of course, this being a video game review, it’s the latter. Yet such is the appropriately named CrazyBomb and its level of oddness that it can cause one to wonder.

CrazyBomb: Gold is weird.

Sometimes you control what looks like a seven-year-old girl dressed up as a musketeer, other times a baby wearing a strategically placed fig leaf. Sometimes cakes fall from the sky. Sometimes bombs do. Your goal is to avoid the former, pick up the latter and dash to the sides to pick up any pills that appear.

Got all that? Good, because I’m not sure I do.

Despite the crazy Far East trappings - developer Tritium hails from Korea - CrazyBomb: Gold is a straightforward game. All you’re essentially doing at any time is swiping a finger left and right across the screen.

Despite this simplicity, CrazyBomb: Gold has a few things going for it that carry it above similar drag-to-avoid games. For one, the aforementioned oddness is a huge asset in an industry filled with bland and samey universes.

Another asset is the clever infusion of role-playing, which allows you to purchase new items and outlandish assistants from a mini-gun-wielding rabbit to a monkey that scampers around picking up loose cakes. These are essential when fighting the end-of-level bosses, which are action-packed and fiendishly difficult events in themselves.

Such embellishments fail to disguise the simplicity of what you’re doing, and you may find the madcap aesthetic impenetrable and tiresome. For the rest of us, though, CrazyBomb: Gold provides a welcome slice of colourful, bonkers charm.