Throughout each level you'll find printers that double as checkpoints, named Mr.

About half the chapters are dreams and nightmares inside Ray's mind and memories, while others take place in different sections of the city, inside an insane asylum, and even on a space ship.Įach chapter is essentially one huge location spanning multiple screens, and you move around by walking between platforms, which you can jump to or swing to using your new “arm” (making use of handily placed push-pins).

This involves exploring the whole area and collecting all available objects, even if you might not initially know what you'll need them for. While it's often obvious what the actual goal of the stage is, the steps you'll need to follow to get it done are obscure (in a fun way). In each level, you'll engage in several quests that include a long chain of find-and-combine item puzzles. This is all complemented by a jazzy, noir musical score and wacky, over-the-top voice acting that really brings the silly characters to life. Stick It to the Man consists of ten chapters at the beginning and end of each, and after solving certain puzzles, animated cutscenes are shown in the same style, integrated smoothly and seamlessly. Characters’ heads bob comically up and down at the mouth while speaking, completely disconnecting the two halves. The whole side-scrolling world, including all of its characters, is made to look as if it were cut out of paper and stickers, and the surreal hand-drawn art style is very effective in sketching the twisted, crazy world Ray lives in. Ray quickly discovers that he can use his new appendage to listen to other people's thoughts and peel off stickers from their thought bubbles and the environment, which comes in handy for learning the cabbie’s hidden secret that will (literally) set the wheels in motion. Eager to show it to his girlfriend, he needs to get a taxi to take him home, but the cab driver is suicidal for private reasons of his own, so he doesn't want to drive anyone anywhere.

When Ray wakes up, he has a pink spaghetti arm growing out of his head. Ray is a hard hat tester, and when he leaves for home one fateful day, ironically a plane overhead drops a mysterious canister right on him. What would you do if you suddenly acquired the power to read people's minds? This very phenomenon happens to Ray, the protagonist in Zoink Games' Stick It to the Man. Our latest excursion resulted in two whimsically charming side-scrolling games, Stick It to the Man and Tiny Thief. As more and more adventures move away from puzzle-heavy experiences, we once again venture outside traditional genre boundaries looking for new and interesting puzzling experiences.