Slide Adventure: Mag Kid (DS) Preview

Before I begin, I wanted to take pictures of me actually playing/showing some of the other parts of the game, but it would've been problematic, so I just decided not to.

I just finished a session of Slide Adventure, and it’s really a unique little game. There are some flaws to be found, but it’s still a rather fun adventure from the meager time I’ve spent with it. From what I’ve encountered so far, it requires no knowledge of Japanese to play through, and I suspect it’ll be like that the entire way through the game.

I played for about an hour and a half and went through 8 or so levels. Along the way, I also encountered two boss fights, and those are easily the highlight of Slide Adventure.

Basically, the premise is to slide around, as already noted/hopefully indicated. Before the game begins, you’re treated to a short cut scene that sets the exposition: lightning strikes the house of a family and causes for various objects in the household to be charged and sentient. You control the magnet (Mag Kid) in the household who has the ability to latch onto enemies and pull them around behind you.

Before beginning, in some levels, there will be brief cut scene to explain what your objective is while also showing some dialogue between the various members of the household. The problem here is that, you can’t skip the cut scenes. It’s not an overt problem, but, since I can’t read Japanese, it’s tedious to sit through a minute or so of dialogue that can’t be fast forwarded through nor skipped. Regardless, it’s a minor complaint.

Once you begin the level, you’ll be able to slide across various surfaces in the household to complete your objective. So far, I’ve encountered mainly “collect-a-thon” type objectives, which, is disappointing, but not really an issue. You move around the house via the family members themselves. There are various items (cell phone holder, bouquet of flowers, comic books, glasses container, etc.) that you can move inside of that will then be transported via one of the family member’s to another section of the house. Some of the places you can travel to and from include the living room, the kitchen, children’s room, garage, etc. There are a few problems with this setup, however. Each time you are transported to a new area of the house, there’s a minor load time you have to wait through. You can skip it, usually, though, by pressing B, but you still have to wait 3-5 seconds or so to start at the next area. Additionally, nothing is cohesive. Each of the areas are fragmented, and, generally, isolated from the others, so it can be a hassle to backtrack. It also doesn’t help that there’s no in-game map to peruse, so it can be an even bigger issue just figuring out where you are. Luckily, none of the areas is very large, so you shouldn’t expect to get lost very often.

Each area contains its own unique enemies. As previously mentioned, by quickly sliding into an enemy, you’ll stun them and then be able to latch onto them. Each enemy has a unique power that can then be used by Mag Kid once latched onto him. The more enemies you latch onto, though, the slower you’ll become. Also, by quickly jolting the DS, any enemy latched onto you will be removed and stunned for a brief period of time. Green enemies allow you to shoot a laser that will stun enemies; blue ones shoot bubbles, red ones allow you to shoot fire, and will also disintegrate some enemies if they touch you, etc. So far, I’ve encountered somewhere around 6-8 different enemy types that Mag Kid can latch on to. Each has their own unique skills that are required for taking out other types of enemies. For example, in order to stun and latch onto fire enemies, you must first have the water enemy latched onto you, so that you can shoot bubbles and douse the flames. The same applies for electric enemies: they move around and will eventually stop then discharge some electricity. During that time, shoot them with bubbles, and they’ll be stunned. There are also hostile enemies that you can defeat, but not latch onto. These enemies can sometimes drop power-ups, though. So far, I’ve found two different ones: one that will cause you and whatever latched enemies on you to grow in size, and one that’ll cause you to shrink.

The controls are excellent and super sensitive. It’s just like handling an optical mouse, basically. You don’t have to play on a flat or smooth surface, even, to enjoy the game. I played it on my bed and just slid my DS around on the covers. Another neat thing is the actual slide device also has rumble built into it. Which makes me wonder if it’s also compliant with the other DS games that support rumble.

Mag Kid has a health bar that will continually decrease upon being damaged by an enemy. For instance, if an enemy shoots you with its laser, you’ll lose 5 HP. You can replenish your health through hearts that can be found throughout the house, but there is usually only one or two per level. Bosses also have a health bar, so when you damage them, you’ll see the amount of HP you’re taking from them, as well.

It’s quite evident that the game is targeted at a young age group. It’s not very difficult (so far), and the controls are very simplistic. Everything is 2D, colorful, and, overall, pretty jovial. The music is also upbeat, unsurprisingly, but it’s very limited. For most levels, there’s only one or two songs that will continuously play; so it can get repetitive.

Finally, the boss fights. I don’t want to spoil too much, but they’re definitely fun. The first boss fight requires you to first gain the abilities of an enemy that allows you to thrust forward quickly. Think of them as the Pegasus Boots from Legend of Zelda. Anyway, you face off against these five different colored teddy bears that have come to life and are sitting atop of five drawers. Each teddy bear has a drawer of its own. They will throw things at you as well as slide open the drawers to damage you. When one of the drawers is slid open, you have to thrust into it in order to damage the teddy bear on top of it. Do enough damage, and you’ll knock out the teddy bear on top. By defeating all five, you’ll beat the boss. The second boss I went up against were flames that were blazing out of a stove.

There’s definitely an emphasis on exploration. You can collect various “Robo Cards” that are strewn about levels. I’m not sure how many in total there are, but each Robo Card is added to your Card Collection upon finding it. These Robo Cards open up timed mini-games (so far, only 60 seconds in length) to play that track your high scores. So far, I’ve collected three Robo Cards. The one mini-game had a deck of cards lined across a table on the bottom screen, and the top screen shows the card that you have to find. Slide around searching for the card, and once found, press A. The top screen will then assign you a new card to locate. The second game that I played involved catching fish. The game takes place in a lake, and you have a net at your disposal that must be used to “hold down” the fish by pressing and holding A, and if you hold them down for long enough, you’ll catch them. The fish will, however, attempt to escape and will move away from the net, so you have to slide along with them in order to not lose your catch. There are various sized fish, and the larger ones are worth more points, but they’re also more difficult to catch. The smaller ones tend to travel in packs, too. The last mini-game I played was extremely simple: swat flies. Various, different colored flies, fly around a small level, and you just slide around and swat at them. The different colored flies are worth more points. For example, gold were worth 6, I believe, and red or blue were worth 1. They’re all the same size, though, but they travel at different speeds. The mini-games are all controlled via the slide controller, if that wasn’t already implied.

There’s a multiplayer mode available with two different options, but I’m not sure what they are. It’s not Wi-Fi enabled, or else I would’ve tried to play it. I’m interested in what you do in multiplayer.

It’s been pretty satisfying so far, and I think I’ll enjoy playing through it in short intervals. I foresee it being a short game, unfortunately, but I hope it isn’t too, too short. If you’re interested in the game, I think it’s a worthwhile purchase since $20 isn’t that much, and you’ll probably have fun with such a quirky game. I wouldn’t recommend it for more than that, though. I’d definitely like to see other games make use of this peripheral, but I doubt any others will -- but, the potential’s there. Overall, it’s a neat game with some minor flaws that does some unique things you likely won’t ever see again on the DS.

Jam it back in, in the dark.