Sidehill Gouger is a couple of things.

Literally taken, a sidehill gouger is an imaginary creature with uneven legs. If you ever see one out in the forest, start looking for Bigfoot, because he’s probably not all that far away. Here at GA, though, we want to talk about a sidehill gouger, we probably mean the indie game developed by Canned Games. (If an “Imaginary Creature Angels” section ever gets started, you’ll hear it here first, though.)

Rating: E (There is no ESRB rating since this is an indie game)
Players: 1
Genre: Puzzle
Publisher: Canned Games
System: Xbox 360 (80 MS points)
Release Date: December 15, 2009

BUY/PASS

Canned Games’ designers, Shannon Brownlee and Adam Culberson, have taken a beloved family story and set a puzzle game (dedicated to Everett “Grampy” Culberson) to it. It’s pretty simple.

Young Andrew is at summer camp and wants to go fishing when he recalls his Grampy’s advice: Beware the Sidehill Gouger. Each level, in a nutshell, requires you to find and shoot the Gouger with Andrew’s trusty slingshot.

I have one recommendation, as far as actual gameplay goes: Ignore the “How to Play” section given to you at the beginning. It’s a little confusing, and you’ll pick up everything you need to know in the first few levels anyway.

Move Andy around with the left stick to uncover bits of the 9×6 board, and aim his slingshot with the right stick. You’re given clues to the Gouger’s location with bits of blood on the ground, and, lest things get too easy, occasional potholes will befall you. Or you befall them. Either way, the level is over if you end up in one. Or if you let the monster-thing eat you. But I thought that went without saying.

You also uncover a couple of other creatures on your trek across the 54-square board: Treesqueaks and Hidebehinds. Treesqueaks live in trees, and they squeak. But one thing their name won’t tell you is that if you dare to cross its path again, it might just pick you up and drop you in an undisclosed location, kind of like the Secret Service does for the President in the event of a nearby disaster/bomb threat/upset wife. Hidebehinds hide behind things (Yeah! I know! It’s genius!) but may cover up the steps you’ve already taken once you cross its path. Altogether, these things don’t really impact gameplay that much, they just make it a little less predictable.

What Canned Games has done is make a Minesweeper clone. Granted, this is a Minesweeper clone where you do your best to blow up the mine once you think you know where it is, but still.

Of course, there are differences. Well, in Minesweeper, you get points. The timer also counts down to give you a finite amount of time to complete the board and gives you some level of urgency. When you finish a minesweeper board, maybe you even feel some sense of accomplishment. Sidehill Gouger…well, maybe this is because it’s meant for kids, but the timer counts up. As far as I know, there’s not a point where a level just says to you, “Okay, you’ve been doing this too long, you’re done.” And if it did, it wouldn’t matter — you’d just start the level over again with slightly moved pieces. Also, those points things? I can’t find any. You get “trophies” for completing “days,” and a “new best time” record set any time you finish a level particularly fast, but those just don’t particularly mean anything to me. (Once again, that could be because it’s probably for children.)

Overall, the aesthetic of the game is bright and colorful, and the art is like it’s attempting to be a lifelike cartoon. As far as the people go, anyway. A few of the boards were bright enough that I found it difficult to see the treesqueaks from time to time. This may be a design thing, but a few of the tiles become curves, and one curve always meets another. So, when you find a curve, you also are almost guaranteed to find another curve — and you can cross off finding the Gouger in that spot.

These kinds of puzzle games aren’t always my bag, and this isn’t any different. However, I was hoping that I could play at least ten minutes before I started hating myself. This isn’t to say that this game made me a bad person (man, I hope not), but I did eventually just start throwing all caution and patience to the wind as a result of having no reason to play carefully. When I got it right, I got it right within fifteen seconds. If I failed, I got Andrew eaten or stuck in a hole in twenty seconds or less. Not a huge waste of time.

I will admit that after a certain point, I just couldn’t do it anymore. The story from one day to the other…well, there really isn’t one. There’s a premise for the entire game in general, and from there I just assume that Andrew loves fishing so much that he’ll do it even with the promise of being eaten by a monster at least twenty times before he gets to the pier. You play on the same maps over and over again, and the same song is used repeatedly. Nothing that adds any excitement at all or takes away from what becomes an endless stream of potholes and imaginary creatures.

Because I’m so impatient, one feature in particular did make me laugh. At the bottom of the screen where you move between levels is a meter that measures your “streak,” how many levels you beat without failing. To me, that kind of became a joke in itself. I played this like I was running towards a cliff, and if I happened to shoot the Gouger, then yay. I’m sure that if you wanted to think and strategize this sort of thing, you could get a perfect streak going, but that’s definitely not for me. My streak was never higher than 1. I like action, and guns, and a storyline that lasts more than a few screens. Sidehill Gouger might be the perfect indie game for some of you out there, but not me.

I might have seen this game a lot differently if I were 12 years younger. As an 11 year-old, I loved these sorts of puzzle games and likely would have played it for at least two hours — well worth the buck it costs. But as an adult, I just don’t dig it that much. That said, if you want to entertain your kids, go ahead and pick this up. It’s clean fun with some sweetness behind it at a very affordable price, and where else can you find that these days?

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