I love flying. I love the Bloody Mary after takeoff, the banter with the cabin crew and I even think that the food is OK, although my discerning taste is usually directly affected by the aforementioned Bloody Mary. However, I do get genuinely nervous when checking my luggage in, especially if there are valuables in there, such as my laptop or my guitar. Although I really enjoyed playing Crazy Belts, the awesome new lost luggage platform game from Immanitas Entertainment, it has done nothing to assuage my fears about what happens to my bags as they disappear through the black plastic flaps.
Immanitas Entertainment have a knack for publishing games that have a simple, universal appeal and are more often than not pretty hard to put down (see Bomb the Monsters! for a perfect example). I knew that Crazy Belts was going to be no exception as soon as I heard the jazzy soundtrack and saw the cute cartoon faces on each item of luggage. No wonder it has Competition finalist reached the finals in Gamelab’s Barcelona 2014 Games & Interactive Conference…
The game is fairly simple to grasp but tricky to master; luggage drops from a pipe in the ceiling onto various types of moving conveyor belts and it is your job to manipulate these belts into carrying the luggage into the chute at the bottom of the screen that has a corresponding colour with the luggage. You are warned as to which type of bag is coming next with a picture of it in the top right-hand corner of the screen, so you have time to adjust the belts to maneuver the red bags in to the red chutes, the green bags into the green chute and so on.
You begin your journey at London Heathrow airport (each set of 10 levels are collated into one of the world’s major airports) and to pass a level, you have to get a specified amount of bags into the correct chutes; get three bags in the wrng chute and you have to start the level again. I really like the variety of bags that drop out of the pipe: as well as the standard suitcases and handbags, there’s the VIP luggage that emits a vibrant glow (don’t foul this one up or it takes all of your lives), puppies in pet cages (RSPCA, shut your eyes), electric guitars strapped to amplifiers (gulp) and, rather disconcertingly, hazardous materials that emit a coloured smoke from their grey box, so you only know which chute to put them in once they’ve dropped. You receive a cheery, “Hurray!” when you get one right and a clunking “EERRRRR!” when you mismatch the coloured chutes and bags.
By collecting points in the form of air miles, you can use them to purchase tools to help you along your way, such as a device that slows down time or turns the chutes multi-coloured so it becomes a free-for-all. As you progress through the game, your seemingly dull job as a baggage handler gets more and more glamorous as you visit over 50 levels, including the Statue of Liberty and The Great Wall of China.
The little audio touches such as the cute noises when you pass or fail a level and the anthropomorphic, “Yaaay!” emitted as the bags drop down from the chute make it above and beyond your average multi-platform game; this one get a 5/5 from us. However, after some pretty vivid visions of what could happen in the sorting room, I will be strapping my luggage to me when I take my next flight…
