Ace of Dynamites

Ace of Dynamites sat so inconspicuously on the marketplace that I nearly missed it.  The screen shots looked drab and the blurb read like something slurred out by an adolescent who just found the key to the liquor cabinet, but maybe it was trying to camp it up intentionally.  Who am I to prejudge something?  That would be awfully rude of me.  My face would be so red when the game turned out to be the biggest thing to hit the indie scene since I Made a Game With Zombies in It!

As it turns out, prejudice is sometimes a good thing.  Ace of Dynamites is so awful they might have to invent a new form of science just to study it.  It’s a puzzle game in the very loosest sense of the term.  I could explain in detail the play mechanics but doing so will result in my boredom induced headache returning, so I’ll try to sum them up as cleanly as possible.

You control a head.  You try to find a door.  There are many doors.  Collect three diamonds per a room.  Or not, if you wish.  I don’t care and neither does the game.  There’s skulls along the ground.  Don’t touch them.  There’s skulls chasing you.  Run away.  There’s boxes.  Push them around.  There’s dynamite boxes.  Blow them up.  Stand next to them and detonate?  Go ahead, it won’t hurt you.  Oh screw it, my headache came back anyway.

Fairy Engine LLC cut every corner possible developing this poop sandwich.  The graphics are ugly, flat, unanimated, and cheap looking.  What few sound effects there are annoy my eardrums worse then having an earwig burrow into them.  There’s no music, but given how bad everything else turned out that’s likely a blessing.  The menus are either stock or look enough like it to embarrass.  And then there’s the play control, if you can call it that.  Lining up your character to push boxes is the biggest challenge in the game.  Well, next to walking through an opening in a wall, or across a bridge.  The lack of setting parameters for movement means you’ll die more by walking into stationary skulls then anything else.  The face thingy glides around like it has tunnel vision.  It’s lazy and sloppy, maybe even a little insulting.

There’s only twenty levels, along with a few tutorial levels that serve to teach you how bad the game is.  Each stage has three degrees of difficulty.  The easiest setting would be useful to determine which kids should be riding the short bus to school.  The other two offer some extra baddies chasing you around, but you can’t play on those settings until you beat the game on Spectacular Retard mode.  Following that, you’ll be looking for something else to do that will be a welcome alternative to playing Ace of Dynamites some more.  Dig out that pesky ingrown toenail with a rusty monkey wrench.  Anything.

Playing Ace of Dynamites will be the worst thing to happen to you this week.  Even if your brand new puppy dies from choking to death on a winning lottery ticket, you would still be ahead on points.  It’s so bad I think it could make my personal short list of worst video games I’ve ever played.  The only redeeming value I could think of was somehow weaponizing it for use in the War on Terror.  Maybe not that either.  I’m sure the Geneva Convention would object.

Ace of Dynamites was developed by Fairy Engine LLC

80 Microsoft Points felt bad for Frederic My in the making of this review.