Garlic

Garlic (2021) is a retro running and jumping game where you play a humanoid onion ascending a tower to seduce a goddess at the top. You platform through levels filled with deadly moving traps and pitfalls and use your dash to defeat enemies, traverse huge gaps and ricochet off walls and floors to maintain speed. With a bizarre series of outlandish minigames and a tongue-in-cheek sense of humour, its high difficulty and sheer strangeness make for an unusual combination that stands out in a crowded genre.

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You play Garlic, a boy with an onion for a head, as he attempts to make his way to the top of a sprawling tower and meet, then hopefully charm, a mystical goddess. To reach her, you need to face off against the countless enemies that fill the tower and overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles, pitfalls, and deadly traps.

Play involves running and jumping through the stages while avoiding hazards and defeating enemies by dashing into them. When performed into a wall, your dash enables you to bounce backwards with great speed and height or cross huge distances if performed into the floor. Precisely chaining together dashes and jumps to maintain speed is the only way to complete some of the more challenging sections, and mastery of your limited moves is essential. Throughout the game, you also play bizarre minigames akin to WarioWare challenges, such as avoiding dog poo on the pavement or playing arcade-cabinet spaceship shooters.

The result is a game that combines a demanding platforming challenge with wacky humour and minigames to create an unusual blend of challenge and hilarity. Using your learned mastery of your abilities to overcome each new obstacle is a worthwhile challenge, with the reward not only being the satisfaction of completion but also getting to see what new twists and turns the strange story takes.

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Our examiner, Ben Kendall, first checked Garlic 4 weeks ago. It was re-examined by Jo Robertson and updated 3 weeks ago.