Thank you Ramez Al Tabbaa and FistikTech for sending us this game to review!

Avocuddle is a single player platformer game developed by Ramez Al Tabbaa and published by FistikTech. The story is centered around two avocado halves – AvoRa and Avolyn – that are madly in love. Players play as AvoRa, whose goal is to retrieve Avolyn back from the single guy who abducted her in his UFO.

Upon witnessing Avolyn’s kidnapping, AvoRa was shocked and confused and had no idea what to do. Fortunately, Love Orbs were there to help. Apparently, they saw what had happened, and in an effort to help him out throughout the game, guide AvoRa to rescue his significant other.

The journey to rescuing Avolyn is a long one, and along it are many obstacles and enemies that threaten AvoRa’s survival. Not all enemies can be defeated with a simple stomp; in fact, most of them have to be eliminated with one of the guns the player will find throughout the game. These guns are equipped using the numbers on the keyboard (1-9), and once they are equipped, they cannot go back into the inventory unless the player switches to a different weapon.

The types of firearms vary, along with the range they bear, whether or not they have infinite ammo, and in other aspects as well. For instance, the Pulse Gun has unlimited ammunition, but very short range. The Blue Laser Machine Gun, however, is a long-range weapon with limited ammo. One thing remains consistent, though: For guns that require ammunition supply, it can be collected throughout the game inside of crates and other items, or it can be purchased at the Limon shop.

When enemies are killed, they drop Limon coins, which can be used to buy items at Limon shops. Limon shops are scattered around the map, and they can sometimes be hard to find. But they are useful, because they allow players to purchase things like ammunition for their weapons, Medkits
(restore AvoRa’s health bar when used), and campfires (an item that once placed cannot be picked up again that gradually heals the player when they stand near it).

Luckily, often before dangerous areas, a magical lamp will be there. Magical lamps allow players, once activated, to come back to the lamp if they are defeated. To activate a magical lamp, AvoRa must simply walk by it.

The controls in Avocuddle take a bit of getting used to, but after that point, they are like second-nature to the player. They must use A and D to walk left and right, shift to run, the space bar to jump and double-jump, mouse to aim guns, left-click to fire them, and I to open AvoRa’s inventory.

In some places in the game, it may be necessary to push items out of the way in order to reach someplace. Not all items are able to be moved, but to push the ones that are, the player must simply move toward them. And, to push harder, the player can press shift while doing so.

Movable items like wooden crates may not be the only thing that will make an obstacle of themselves. Walls might seem intimidating at first, but not when the player can climb over them. The player can climb up walls by performing wall clings and wall jumps. They must keep moving toward the wall and press space to do a successful wall cling. To perform a wall jump, they must do a wall cling and, continuing to hold the movement key (A or D), jump with the space bar.

When the two avocado halves see each other, they might do what is called an “Avocuddle”, where they hug and talk about each other saying things like “I love you,” or “Oh, you’re the cutest avocado I’ve ever seen.” To skip these moments, players can press Q if they so choose.

The art in this game is usually bright and colorful, with a simple, yet adorable art style to accompany the vividness in color. Unless one of the avocado halves is sad or angry, everything is happy and blithe.

The background music always matches whatever is currently taking place in the story. For example, when AvoRa and Avolyn’s relationship is suffering, melancholy music fades in. Otherwise, the music differentiates from time to time. The only problem is that the end of each song is an abrupt stop, rather than a smooth, continuous loop.

In this title, sound does not only consist of background music, however. Actually, sound effects are quite significant in Avocuddle. Whenever the player walks, jumps, fires their weapon, hits an enemy, collects Limon coins, etc., a specific sound effect plays. As far as I can tell, these sound effects are of decent quality, but even if the player does not like or want to hear them, they can tune them out in the main menu.

As far as moral warnings go, there are a few things that should be pointed out. Blasphemy is revealed early in the game, as AvoRa used the phrase “Oh my god. . .” Also, I found that when AvoRa kills a mine-like enemy that explodes upon contact, blood spews everywhere, including from the top of the screen. Another thing that I thought I should mention is that almost every enemy the player might encounter has to be defeated with a gun. But other than that, there were no other ethical issues that I noticed.

I did, however, notice some punctuation, capitalization, and spelling mistakes in some of the dialogue. To illustrate, in one sentence describing one of the weapons I picked up, the Love Orbs told me this: “The Pulse Gun has infinit ammo.” I hope that these errors are fixed in the coming updates.

I found Avocuddle to be a decently fun title, and to someone who is looking for a nice story game like this I would recommend it. I look forward to future games from this developer.