Vital Stats

Genre: Puzzle/Platformer
Players: 1
Online: None

Developer: Twisted Pixel Games
Publisher: Twisted Pixel Games
ESRB Rating: E10+
Release Date: 1/21/09

Platforms

• Xbox 360

The Maw is a puzzle platformer that’s loaded with personality and polished until it shines. Twisted Pixel’s labor of love may be about eating things and getting bigger to eat more things, but the first thing Maw will devour is your heart.

Purple People Eater
When you spend any amount of time playing games to write about them, you start to get a sense of just how homogenous gaming really is. After a while you start craving novelty (please let this game be anything but another level-based RPG…please let this one be anything but another 3d-platformer). So when I tell you that there’s nothing new in The Maw, but the game is fun despite it, I want you grasp the sheer magnitude of what that means.

The Maw tells the story of Frank, a blue alien from a utopia that doesn’t really grasp ideas like fear and pain. Frank’s species has a little telepathic stone in their heads that controls the emotions of those around them and presumably paved the way to that utopia. This is handy because it lets Frank make friends with Maw, an adorable purple blob that’s really just enough eye and body to make use of his many many teeth. When he eats enough, he gets a little bigger and goes on to eat bigger things. Maw is indestructible too, so it comes as something of a relief that he’s too cowardly and incompetent to do any real damage. That is, without guidance.

The game begins as Frank is apprehended by the powers that be in galactic civilization, who are just smart enough to lock up naïve mind-controlling aliens, but just dumb enough to incarcerate them alongside mind-controllable purple eating machines. Of course the prison ship crashes, and that’s where the game really gets underway.

Most of what you’ll be doing consists of guiding Maw with a high-tech (read: glowy) leash and encouraging him to eat things and grow until the whole process spirals out of control. It’s a little bit Katamari Damacy as Maw is willing to eat larger things as he grows bigger. It’s also a little bit Kirby, because Maw inherits the abilities of the things he eats (though The Maw uses these absorbed abilities more for puzzle-solving and platforming than Kirby-style action). Honestly, why these two gameplay concepts weren’t combined sooner is a mystery. It’s like having chocolate and peanut butter and storing them in separate cabinets.

It’s not as though feeding Maw is innately gratifying, it’s mostly just ushering him around the map to collide with edible critters, but Maw is just so pleased with himself when he eats. Left to his own devices, Maw hunts…badly, so you’re driven by a compelling mix of pity and amusement to help the little purple blob.

This touches on what The Maw does really well: personality. Despite the fact that Maw is little more than a mouth with a single eye stalk, Twisted Pixel has managed to make him the most expressive game character in years. Perhaps it’s the fact that The Maw uses a cartoony style that lets it altogether sidestep uncanny valley issues, or maybe it’s because Twisted Pixel has a really strong grasp of facial animations. Regardless, ten minutes after you meet Maw, you’ll know three things: Maw is hungry, incapable of satiating that hunger on his own, and it doesn’t matter what or who you have to kill, you will see to it that Maw is fed.

In fact, one of the coolest things about the game is the moment of clarity where you realize that you’re the bad guy (it’ll probably crop up around the point where you start eating people). It’s not that playing the villain is new or even interesting any more, but what’s impressive is that committing omnicide is so much fun that The Maw lulls you into forgetting that killing is wrong. Fortunately, Frank is a little too oblivious and innocent for moral quandaries, which allows gameplay to proceed unimpeded.

A Boy and His Blob
Gameplay is divided into a series of stages, each of which follows a fairly standard progression. Frank and Maw arrive on the scene and encounter some sort of barrier (usually some inadequate attempt on your life by galactic bounty hunters), which Frank circumnavigates or cripples so that Maw can break through and wreak some gastronomic havoc. The circumnavigation often consists of platforming, which is the weakest part of the game.

The platforming controls aren’t particularly problematic–they’re fairly standard and responsive. Instead, the trouble lies more in the design, which is predictable and pedestrian when Frank is separated from Maw. There’s really only one kind of platform in these sections of the game (a gray rock outcropping) that doesn’t blend well with the environment. They almost always come in chains that play like picking your way across a garden path of stones, only you have to start over from the beginning if you don’t hit every one. Chains of these platforms are familiar by the second sighting, dull by the third, and strangely immersion-breaking thereafter. It’s like seeing a post-it from the designers reminding you you’re playing a game.

The sometimes tricky platforming is also at odds with the otherwise extensive effort The Maw makes to be accessible. The Maw doesn’t punish failure at all–no matter how much you experiment during the game, there’s no death or timer to speak of, so the worst thing that can happen is that you don’t advance. In addition, the game introduces you to level progression first with flybys and salient “?” markers while you’re first getting acquainted. A nice touch is the fact that Maw’s default form is translucent, which means that no matter how big he gets, he doesn’t obstruct your view. Even the music gives you feedback about whether you’re on the right track to solving the puzzle at hand. Every time you arrive at a relevant destination or accomplish something important, the game adds strains to the melody or harmony that enriches the score. Twisted Pixel did an exemplary job of keeping the gameplay accessible (in fact, the combination of adorable blob and accessible gameplay may well make this a good gateway game into more hardcore 3d platformers), though professed hardcore gamers may feel that the minimal punishment makes the game feel too easy.

The last notable gameplay point is Maw’s inherited abilities. Once he’s large enough, there are about five different animals that will transform Maw from an eating machine into an unstoppable eating machine. No matter how badly the planet’s flora and fauna cow the little blob, there’s nothing like breathing fire to screw his courage to the sticking point. Eating other critters allows Maw to negotiate obstacles with electroshock, floating (delivering fanged death from above), pummeling, and outright obliteration via laser eyes. Writing it out like this makes it all sound terribly violent, but it’s really just cheerily…violent. Really, the game’s sense of humor prevents it from descending into anything uncouth and it’s all very lighthearted.

Most of these abilities are easy to use. If Maw doesn’t manage on his own, it’s usually just a button press to get things rolling. One notable troublemaker is the Beetul, however, which grants the ability to charge and pummel anything in your way. The tricky thing is that, instead of heading whatever direction the camera is pointing, Maw charges off in whatever direction his leash is pointing. Maw tends to keep pace with Frank about 45° from the camera direction, so more often than not, you’ll bolt off in the wrong direction whenever you plan to bowl over some obstacle.

The art assets are pleasant. Ignoring the occasionally out-of-place platforms, The Maw exploits its cartoony art style to deliver lush-feeling environments and detailed characters at a file size that doesn’t take forever to download (~150 mb). The music also fits the lighthearted comedy of the game, and has a whimsy reminiscent of Loony Tunes that’s very distinctive. It’s only a pity that we only have 3 hours of gameplay to spend feeding The Maw.

Dessert
The Maw is a thoroughly accessible game that wastes neither time nor money. Even though hardcore gamers may find it a bit on the easy side and genre fans will find some of the platforming tepid, it takes a heart of flint to resist enjoying the game. Twisted Pixel’s sense of humor and Maw’s heartwarming and hilarious expressiveness keep the game engaging all the way through and for some subsequent noodling around. Give it a shot if you like fun.

What It Costs: $10

What It’s Worth:
•To The Hardcore: $15
•To The Genre Fan: $10
•To The Casual: $15