Spotto!

Genre: Arcade

Players: 1

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Review:

Spotto! is a physics-based Arcade-style game first released on the Nintendo DSi via the DSiWare service in 2010, a later grandfathered into the Nintendo 3DS eShop when the Nintendo 3DS released. In this game, players take the role of the titular Spotto, a bird with a reputation in the military for being the best “bombirdier”, who must answer the call of duty to respond to the bird president’s bird daughter getting abducted by… er, ghosts, for some reason. And he must fight his way through them by… throwing bombs in their open mouths.

Yeah, the plot makes zero sense, but I suppose it doesn’t really have to, because it makes for a pretty adorable presentation. This game uses 2D characters with a messy hand-drawn look, but the real star here is the sound. Spotto himself responds to his successes and failures in the game by shouting his own name in celebration or letting out a long sad sigh when he misses, and when you manage to mess up and hit yourself with a bomb (making a respectable-sounding boom), it results in Spotto coughing pathetically. It’s all quite adorable.

As for the gameplay itself, this uses physics roughly similar to Worms and Angry Birds, with players flinging bombs and trying to get the trajectory right to land those bombs in the open mouths of ghosts. It’s fairly simple gameplay, but it works.

The only issue is that this gets a bit repetitive, especially when you evidently can’t even change the strength of your throw, only the angle. And you can’t move your character, either, you can only change the angle Spotto throws at.

In the end, Spotto! is still a perfectly decent little Arcade-style game, if you’re looking for a time-waster without much depth. But there are numerous more interesting games available on the Nintendo 3DS, and you’re better off going with one of those instead.

tl;dr – Spotto! Is an Arcade style game where players take the role of a duck trying to aim a trajectory so he can fling bombs into the mouths of ghosts. It’s an adorable game, and the gameplay is decent, but there’s likely not enough depth here to hold your interest.

Grade: C+

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