Way, way back at E3 I actually saw The Chase: Felix Meets Felicity. At the time the game didn’t have a name and it was strictly under embargo. At a first glance it’s easy to write off the game as either “kiddy” or “girly”, but, hey, I like to try new things so I gave the unnamed game a look. A passionate developer walked me through the game since it wasn’t ready to be played, but I liked what I saw.
Underneath the look and the love story plot where Chase and Felicity are running to meet each other for a date is a solid platfomer. Chase’s levels are similar to Kirby: Canvas Curse where you draw paths with the stylus for him to run on, but unlike Nintendo’s game you can move Chase with the D-pad. Felicity’s ability is sort of like Umihara Kawase (aka Yumi’s Odd Odyssey in North America) she has an elastic swinging line. Along the way Felix and Felicity meet NPCs that give them comical love advice and power ups that can freeze time. There are lots of concepts here and probably the most important ingredient needed to gel The Chase: Felix Meets Felicity into sleeper hit territory is good level design. We’ll see if Razorback Studios and Atari pulls the last part off before The Chase: Felix Meets Felicity comes out on the Nintendo DS this February.
You know before the team decided on making the game a love story they considered replacing the characters with… robots. It may have given the Chase more mainstream appeal, but the love story setting is certainly makes the Chase more memorable than another robot game.
Images courtesy of Atari.
