Games for the Weekend is a weekly feature aimed at helping you avoid doing something constructive with your downtime. Each Friday we’ll be recommending a game for Mac, iPhone or iPad that we think is awesome. Here is one cool enough to keep you busy during this weekend.
Kick the Buddy: Second Kick ($ 0.99 Universal) is a stress-releasing game with an often silly and ultimately morbid twist. Acting out your aggressions on an insufferable rag doll locked in a empty room, you are provided an arsenal of weapons, tools and other assorted household objects.
The game doesn’t really start. There are no levels, and there is no beginning or end to a story. There is just a rag doll named Buddy that taunts you until you beat him dead. Once you eliminate Buddy, all is not lost, like the doll Chucky in the popular cult horror film classic Child’s Play, Buddy will shortly spring back to life only to taunt you some more. When it is just you and Buddy in the room, you can simply use your finger to grab Buddy and throw him around the room. The physics keeping Buddy’s body parts together and the fact that Buddy comments on the experience as he lives through it adds to the humorous aspects of the game. Tossing, spinning, throwing and beating up on a rag doll that always comes back for more. Each time with more insulting comments, jests and jeers.
It is not always just you and Buddy in the room. You can choose from a wide selection of weapons as well: handguns, grenades, flame throwers, knives, swords and crossbows. There are also hammers, saws, vice grips and meat cleavers. Just about every object you bring into the room can be used to beat, tear, burn and eventually annihilate buddy. You can even call on a zoo full of animals and weather from the gods to help in your quest.
As you learn new and more effective means of destroying Buddy, you earn bucks that are in turn used to purchase and unlock additional weapons and objects throughout the game. The achievements within the game, which earn you more and more bucks, are earned by simply using all of the different objects you acquire against Buddy, and bring him to a more sudden demise each time. You can also earn more bucks by playing a slot machine with pulls you earn in the game. Each pull can win a card; collect all the cards in the series to win prizes.
If you are not earning cash fast enough in the game, bucks and pulls of the slot machine are available via an in-app purchase. Also available as an in app purchase is gold. Gold is used to unlock certain exclusive content. It is important to note that gold is only available through in app purchases, gold cannot be earned. So think of the items that can only be unlocked with gold as more of a pay-as-you-go option than a means of leveling up your weapon arsenal.
The room choice and attire that Buddy wears can be swapped out to accommodate a variety of settings as well. From ridiculous hats to outrageous costumes and flashy shoes. The modern day equivalent of placing a photo on a dart board, Kick the Buddy will let you swap out Buddy’s face with a picture from your own photo library: perhaps someone that has recently done you wrong. Buddy becomes your own personal voodoo doll — just don’t get too carried away, it is just a game after all.
When you are finally finished, you are able to take a photo of your accomplishment and share it online with your Twitter and Facebook friends. And this may be why the app has been branded with a Valentine’s Day theme just before the holiday. So practice this weekend and earn some bucks and you will be well-equipped to express your true feelings after that important someone forgets that you were meant to be their special Valentine this year.
Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.
- How do developers ride the Siri wave?
- Connectivity means making the machine disappear
- Access vs. ownership: Why UltraViolet has already lost
 |
 |