Save Me Mr. Tako: Definitive Edition is an 8-bit platformer produced by Christophe Galati, self-published on Steam, and authored by Limited Run Games on the Switch. A tribute towards the Game Boy era, this wonderful game follows Tako, an octopus pit in the center of a war between octopuses and humans. With creative platforming along with a genuinely inspired story and cast, Save Me Mr Tako is an immediate classic.
Had Save Me Mr Tako emerge in the period in gaming it pays homage to, the heyday from the original Game Boy, I believe we’d be living in Tako’s world. The sport clearly draws inspiration from classics like Kirby’s Dreamland in the way its overworld was created, games like Shantae in its gameplay, and games like Pokèmon and The Legend of Zelda in its music design. But it is additionally a wholly unique and wonderful experience all its very own.
The concept is weird, but what classic game isn’t? Octopuses and humans are in war, with Bako, a tyrannical octopus in the helm of his army. It’s merely a matter of time before their kidnapping and backstabbing render octopuses the rulers of the world. That is, unless Bako’s brother, Tako, can overcome his timidness, join the resistance, and prevent Bako and the octopus army. Unlike so many games in the early platforming era, the storyline in Save Me Mr Tako is actually the heart from the game. When you first boot up, you get three difficulty options to choose from. The easiest mode provides you with copious lives to start. It's intended for experiencing the story, since, on harder difficulties where you begin with fewer lives or have a permanently fixed number and only one hit, game over means beginning with the beginning of a level. And also the levels get quite hard. The story isn't necessarily perfectly translated into English, but overall, it’s emotional, it’s thought-provoking, and it’s not the least bit corny, despite the farfetched premise. There is a whole aspect about how exactly octopuses are jealous that humans might have children without dying, however they can’t. It’s a genuinely moving and fascinating plot.
Save Me Mr Tako is a platformer with a few adventure and Metroidvania elements. You bop from level to level, jumping and inking your way in one side to the other. Your ink freezes enemies and turns them into platforms, making timing your jumps and shots key to traversing the sun and rain. Your jump in this game is much higher than you’d typically begin platformers, making the physics slightly off from your platforming muscle memory. Additionally, there is a big focus on watching in which you jump. The game implores you early on to carry the down button to check what’s below you before jumping since there are often enemies, pits, and spikes to mess with you. All together, these classic platforming elements feel fresh and creative.
The other key gameplay piece in Save Me Mr Tako is the hats. Throughout the game, you will find 40 different hats to collect, each embued having a different power along with a cute new sprite. They range from unmissable to difficult to find to located in challenges or backtracking. Some are much more useful than others, giving you extra hits or causing you to move faster. Others are virtually purely aesthetic. However they add a nice incentive to backtrack and explore since you don't know what new hat might genuinely assist you in your quest. I only wish more of the hats had a platforming utility. A hat that lets you shoot arrows, for example, is useful within the one level you acquire it in because its range is a bit more than your ink, and it helps you shoot buttons to spread out doors. But next, it simply becomes an aesthetic essentially. I wish your arrows could stick into walls or something like that and be used like a platforming tool.
The game design itself is mostly lovely. It might be completed in 8-bit with only three colors on the screen at any given time, but there manages to be great detail in the characters, environments, and backgrounds. To include color, though, every world includes a different colored overlay that can automatically change the primary and secondary colors on the screen, or cycle with the color palettes manually to make sure your eyes are okay with whatever color is on screen. I appreciate both because it meant that the entire game wouldn’t be classic Kirby green and that when occasionally, a color assaulted my eyes, I possibly could change it out temporarily.
All of the world’s kingdoms have unique and clear personalities, and also the characters have great expression animations when they react to different things or go to sleep. I had to spend hrs in to the game to realize how to recognize who is speaking at any given time, that we found a little frustrating, however i still could follow along for the most part beforehand. I only wish the game had some sort of journal or means of pausing and recalling which character was which. So many look so similar that I lost tabs on a lot of the characters and who was who. All of them had great roles to experience within the story, and I only wish I could remember which ones played which.
Lastly, the music in Save Me Mr Tako is excellent. While some from it sounds quite derivative of Pokèmon and Zelda sometimes, I don’t care; it’s great music. And the range of melodies throughout the levels is perfect.
Save Me Mr. Tako: Definitive Edition is truly an immediate classic. With some small gripes, farmville is ideal for platformer newbies and vets alike because the charming game scales in difficulty but offers ample room for mistakes if you choose to go.
Save Mer Mr. Tako: Definitive Edition is available now on Nintendo Switch and PC via Steam.
