Giant Life

Review

Every now and then you might experience a crappy day. From the time you wake up until the time you lay your head on your favourite pillow, it seems that these specific days just get worse by the minute. It might be a combination of several things that happen throughout the day, and they are amplified if you feel sick. For me, when one of these days arise, I always wish I was a giant, taking my revenge out on all the pitiful people who contributed to my bad day, squashing them and destroying everything they own. As a matter of fact, I had of these days today! So, if you are in the same situation and need to let off some steam, I invite you to do so in the land of Giant Life!

Giant Life is a VR action/casual game developed and published by Patagoniart, and has been available on the Steam platform since the 8 of June 2019.

The game is composed of a tutorial and 22 levels. Your goal is to destroy all the buildings in each of the levels to win one, two or three golden stars, and to amalgamate as many points as you can. To do so, you’ll need to destroy buildings at just the right moment (when people nearby) in order to squash them with blocks of rubble and achieve the maximum number of points.

But how do you destroy these buildings, you might ask? Well, it’s rather simple; as a giant, all you need to do is to throw rocks into the buildings. You’ll have five different types of rock: a normal black rock (which will destroy a house as soon as it hits the target), a rock with a blue light field that explodes into four little stones that fly out in four directions when it hits the ground (these rocks are very effective if you manage to drop them right in the middle of several buildings), a rock with a yellow field that explodes into three smaller rocks in mid-air when you activate it with the trigger button on your control (they are quite effective in destroying houses or boats that are located at a certain distance), a rock with a green light field that will bounce once when it hits the ground, and a rock with a purple light field that becomes bigger as it travels through the air.

At the start of each of the level, you’ll be located on a hill with the village and its villagers right in front of you. On your left, you’ll have a bowl holding a certain number of rocks. The first few stages are easy, but as you progress to different levels, you’ll find that the villages also have buildings and fortifications. You’ll also have boats to destroy occasionally. Bear in mind, you must have at least one golden star to unlock the next level. 

The game looks very good graphically and it is a lot of fun to play, but it is repetitive. I also found that on some occasions my aim was not quite right, (yes, yes, I can hear you all saying, “You can’t throw a rock properly, you old fart”, and you’re right). But then again, sometimes you totally miss a throw and the rock still hits a target!