[wpham]

Barbie Seahorse Adventures, a winning entry in the PyWeek make-a-game-in-a-week-using-Python competition, is a sublime execution of the platforming genre, combining the idealism of Super Mario Bros. hacks like Star Remix with the cohesive playability of SMB itself.

You play a seahorse. Why? Because. Where's the "Barbie" figure into it? Not at all, really, but it's a funny title.

You want to go to the moon. Why? Because. I don't know. The moon is awesome, okay? We wanted to go to the moon. We still kind of want to go to the moon. I guess some people believe that we never went to the moon in the first place, but that doesn't matter, because the desire was always there; we looked up at that rock in the sky, and it's still strikingly beautiful, no matter how much of the mystique of it is undermined by the successes of discovery and exploration. The moon that serves as the endgame of Barbie Seahorse Adventures is not the moon upon which we junk satellites and think about maybe building colonies on. It's the moon of Le Petit Prince, a planet of blocks color-coded according to their purpose, a place in which no adults belong unless you enjoy playing video games, and in that case, please, come to the moon, where trial-and-error and problem-solving and perfect execution of running jumps will bring you closer to your goal.



You can shoot bubbles. Enemies themselves turn into bubbles. Why? Just because. Don't question it. Use the bubbles to your advantage, or don't, it doesn't matter, because although there is a Point A and a Point B, you can get there however you want within the constraints of this whimsical set of physics and rules. There are secrets to discover, hidden caches of fruit that give you bonus points, or coins to give you extra lives. Like many of the aforementioned SMB hacks, Barbie Seahorse Adventures provides the player with plenty of extra lives, but in contrast to the hyper-specificity of those hacks, the extraordinarily rigorous timing and execution required, Barbie Seahorse Adventures doesn't punish the player so much as encourage success. Extra lives aren't there as a necessity, but as an option, a nudge toward the enjoyment of exploration, of the process itself of trial-and-error.



The game does not only have a personality, a constructed and carefully-crafted aesthetic, but is personable as well. It is friendly, without being overbearing; if the game is a girl, then she is the girl in the art gallery with the cute glasses and the short hair gazing very intently at the Magritte on the wall, and you know that she isn't just doing it for superficial reasons, but she really is trying to figure it out, why does that man have an apple for a face? And if the game is a guy, then he is the guy sitting at the bar, having a drink with a couple of friends, maybe he purchased this round because he is a generous guy, maybe it was purchased for him, but they are talking about something absurd and they know it's absurd and what does it matter, things should be absurd and we should enjoy absurd things. What does this have to do with the actual game behind Barbie Seahorse Adventures? Listen to the music at the title screen. Press start, watch the pixelized transition from title screen to level 1, and then listen to the music of level 1. Everything has a face except for the backdrops and landscape of the level itself. The coins and fruit that you collect have smiley faces, the blocks that you, you the seahorse, use to your advantage, have expressions dependent on their purpose and function. The bubbles that enemies become when you bombard them with bubbles are frowning, because they once were birds or something else and now they're bubbles.



The boss, the only boss, a clockwork fight that encompasses two phases of escalating difficulty and a simple-but-clever central mechanic, he wears a little hat. I'm pretty sure it's a bowler hat and it is very dashing on the head of this strange tentacle-mouthed flying bird-moon-creature beast.

And really that sums it all up. This is a platforming game in a cute little hat. It is excellent, and well-worth the relatively, comparatively small block of time that it will consume in your playing of it.
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last.fm | blog

[haze]

I'll only play if the seahorse itself is supposed to be Barbie
that is my only demand.
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[Zmann]

Dashes are not substitutes for commas.

[L]

[wpham]

[km]

I strongly desire to go to the moon, and I'm not even a seahorse.
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vi) RPGs (Role-Playing Games)
For adolescents; half-formed personalities roaming (in packs) in search of identity.

[option]

I strongly desire to be a seahorse, and I dont even want to go to the moon.

[ö]

Seahorses are awesome.

I had almost this exact same idea when I was fourteen. Seriously. Maybe I should have done something about it?

[Zmann]

[rye]

there is a mac ox version of this game my brothers

hallelujah! i'll be trying this out.

[kerobaros]

[wpham]

[les meat]

Does it have a gender switch game mechanic ?
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