I used to wake up at night in a cold sweat, having dreamed that I was a small girl trapped atop the roof of a building, with a small dog, while being inexplicably chased by skeletons.
"Gagagagagagaga" etc.
While I lay there awake, too terrified to go back to sleep, I’d often hope that in just one of those dreams there would be something that could protect me, should I go back to that place.
There never was.
As I grew older, the dreams became less frequent, but they’d still come. It would become embarrassing; in a shared house, screaming that I was a small terrified little girl is somewhat frowned upon.
A few weeks ago, I was browsing the App Store and I found this game, and it appears my prayers have been answered, for some enterprising soul has clearly been afflicted in exactly the same ways as I have, and made this game as the solution to our mutual problem.
Through the medium of charming 8-bit inspired graphics, and bleepy-bloopy sound effects, the game sees you in the role of a small girl who for some reason finds herself trapped atop a building while being inexplicably chased by skeletons.
Luckily for her, the skeletons don’t actually harm her; she’s just scared. Unluckily for her, they will keep chasing her, and the tilt-left and right to move controls making use of literally lots of inertia, meaning move too sharply, and the girl will fall from the building. Bah.
Unlike in my dream though, she has a saviour in the titular Giant Metal Robot, who with a swipe of your finger will slam down his Giant Metal Fists on the skeletons, exterminating them forever, until the next level. For on the next level, there will be more skeletons, and they will run faster, and in groups, or they will split up. Either way, the Giant Metal Robot has more work to do.
The assistance of the Giant Metal Robot, though valuable, is not without consequences; the almighty force of his Giant Metal Fists is such that the girl is flung into the air with the impact, and can be thrown from the building as such. And that inertia means his fists can occasionally crush her as by accident.
It’s frustrating, and addictive. I hope the Giant Metal Robot joins me in my dreams, but that his Giant Metal Fists are more controlled.
