Hurry Up Hedgehog is a puzzle game based on a popular board game known as Igel Argern. Not heard of it? Well it’s also known as Egelrace. Still not heard of it?
Neither have I.
But it loosely translates into “Hedgehogs In A Hurry”, which is where the title Hurry Up Hedgehog comes from. And you’ll never guess this… It has hedgehogs in it. I’m not entirely sure why hedgehogs, but they are.
Okay, so down to gameplay. Basically, we start with a board. Simple enough so far? Good. You select a lane out of six, and you if your ‘hog is already in that lane then you get to move forward, if your hog is next to that lane he can move into it, then forward.
Luckily, it’s not that simple, because if it were then it’d be pretty rubbish. You have four hedgehogs and need to get three of them to the other side first to win, on the way there are holes in the ground, if you fall in one of these then you have to wait until all the other hedgehogs catch up, yours and your opponents, of course, it’s hard to be stupid enough to just walk into one of these holes… That’s why your enemy hedgehogs can shove you into them. How nice of them. But of course, it’s all fair since you can give them the same back.
You can easily master shunting and stacking on top of your opponents, it’s not a hard premise, and the game is relatively simple once you turn the lane selection to player select instead of random. Random actually takes away much of the skill and makes it harder.
So after playing it for one or two games you learn to understand it quite quickly, and you start to enjoy it more. So you want it to give you more of a challenge, which is what puzzle games are all about really. So you add in extra CPU opponents. You have up to 5 CPU opponents, and to each CPU opponent there are four hedgehogs. That’s when things get a bit hectic. Your hedgehogs seem to get trapped in holes, or stacked on top of each other almost instantly, and before you know it it’s all over. That is if you’re me… I’m sure you’d be able to do it with practice, or even skill.
The animations are very simple, static pictures. They’re not particularly great, but it’s always fun to see one do a victory dance. The action itself is… Well… It’s based on a board game that doesn’t consist of landlord hats or boats, so it was never going to be very detailed. It’s functional, and not much else. The main board game action is on the touch screen, so you can move using the stylus… In fact… I don’t think any part of this game actually uses the D-Pad or buttons… Except when you press Start to pause the game and if you want to leave that game, do so. The top screen has those little dancing hedgehogs I spoke about, and if it’s before the end of the game and you’re losing then your bushpig will look rather sad… Which is a nice touch, I love it when a rather confusing game tells me I suck in a nice way.
One thing that would make this game rather great would be a scoreboard… But since you don’t have scores in this game, a time board of some kind. Something to tell you how fast you completed a level and with how many opponents you had etc. But, alas, there’s no way of saving in this game… At all.
Strangely enough though… I enjoyed it. I’m normally the type who is into RPG games with storylines as long as the gameplay, but this one is so simple after you understand how to play it it’s brilliant. I’m not sure I’d recommend buying it for the young’uns, but at £15-£20 who can complain?
Game Play: 7/10 It plays a decent game of what it's supposed to. It'd be more, but it's less than helpful for beginners.
Graphics: 5/10 It's not supposed to look good, it's supposed to be 2D and so it is.
Sound: 5/10 A nice title theme tune, but not much else. Aside from the sound of a hedgehog moving it's silent.
Multiplayer: 5/10 You can set the game up for up to six human players on one DS, you just have to pass it around. Make sure you teach them how to play...
Life Span: 5/10 This isn't meant for constant play, this is something you pick up when you're a bit bored.
Super simple puzzle game isn't actually that bad.
