Doodle Derby

Review

I used to love playing with my toy cars when I was a tadpole, and I guess most of we males did own a few of them in our youth. In my case, my bedroom was literally a car park, and I used to love it! Interestingly, as I grew up, I began to dislike carparks, especially the ones in the morning and afternoon peak hours! The funny thing is that both men and women are experiencing these dreadful situations on a daily basis. But when you do, don’t forget the little soul inside your body who is craving to play with his little cars again, for hours on end. Then don’t look further, as it’s time to play Doodle Derby!

Doodle Dervy is a parkour/racing/puzzle game developed by Studio Erikson and published by Headup Games on the 15^th of November 2019 on Steam. The game is also available on the Nintendo Switch.

The title consists of single-player and multiplayer modes, as well as a level editor, in which you can upload your creation as well as download parkours made by other players.

In the single-player campaign, there are stacks of levels to complete. What you have to do is to reach the finish platform of each parkour as fast as possible within the time limit in order to collect a golden trophy. Some levels will only have a starting and finishing platform, while others will have checkpoint platforms that you must drive onto first and in order (1,2,3 etc) before arriving on the finish platform.

At the beginning of each level, your car will be on the starting platform. The wise thing to do next is to see the entire parkour by zooming out and moving around (with your keyboard arrows or gamepad) and deciding how you’ll execute the puzzle. Bear in mind that you’ll only have the ability to speed up and jump with your car. In the early levels, it will be pretty straightforward, but you might crash anyway, as I did. But as you progress, the parkour will become harder and harder as obstacles will be introduced.  You’ll also start thinking, “there are platforms and ramps missing in this stage”. And you’ll be right. Thankfully, you can enter the build mode for a couple of minutes or so; blades will appear on top of your car, just like a helicopter, and one or two crates will drop into the level for you to collect. When there’s only one, search for the sticker shop; there you can buy a few additional ramps, platforms and other items to help you figure out the puzzle.   

There are collectable items such as stars and keys. Try to figure out how to reach the key first as you can use it to unlock new cars and parkour parts.

I like the artwork; the feel of the innocent child-like drawings reaches deep inside to touch a part of us that may be long forgotten.

Having said that, you will probably become more and more frustrated as you misjudge the parkour and slam your car into obstacles, miss platforms and fall down into these spike drawings at the bottom of the level, or be lifted away to the one at the top by Martian flying saucers. The soundtrack is groovy, maybe a bit too much sometimes, so thankfully you can turn it down as desired. In terms of the controls, you can use your keyboard, but I strongly recommend playing the game with a gamepad.