Thank you ApathyWorks LLC for sending us this game to review!

Angry Birds was an instant hit when it came to tablet and phone devices.  If you enjoyed those game and are looking for a similar challenge with blood spraying everywhere when you mess up, then Cute Things Dying Violently may be just the game for you.  While the title isn’t very creative, I found it funny regardless.

The goal in this game is to fling at least one of the creatures to the escape elevator in each of the forty-eight levels.  There are six stages with eight levels apiece and the final levels for each of them has a progressively harder to beat Hate Bot.  At first this robot merely flings bombs, but later in the game he’ll fling bombs along with fire, lightning and have saw blades rotating around him for protection.  To make matters worse, you have to keep your one and only creature alive while fighting him.  While some deaths are acceptable (and encouraged), at least one creature has to make it into the elevator to complete the level.  

Like many puzzle games, the exit is often obstructed with various obstacles to disarm or avoid to reach the elevator safely.  Sometimes the elevator has a protective wall around it that can be disabled with a press of a button.  Sadly, that button is often surrounded by spinning saw blades or deadly spikes.  Sacrifices are sometimes required to make the escape possible for everyone else.  Most of the time, it should be possible to get everyone out of danger in one piece.

Keeping these creatures alive gets more and more challenging with the addition of fans (trigged by buttons naturally), bubbles, springs, and fog that prevents controlling anything that is not in the light.  Controlling these creatures is pretty straightforward with the left mouse button for moving the creatures horizontally and flinging them vertically with the right mouse button.  Other objects such as springs and crates can be controlled in the same fashion.   Tweaks for the controls include inverting them and disabling the trajectory arrow to make the game more challenging.   The controls seem native to touch screen devices and should come naturally for anyone that is a fan of the Angry Birds series.

If you’re good at physics puzzle games, then you should be able to beat Cute Things Dying Violently in a couple of hours.  To compensate for the short amount of gameplay, there is a weekly challenge level released.  The PC version of the game also has a level editor to create and share your levels with the Steam community. 

There are twenty-four Steam achievements that mostly revolve around the deaths of these cute creatures.  There are achievements for killing 100, 250, and 500 of them. Achievements are also unlocked for killing various forms of the Hate Bot.  One of the achievements has a middle finger for its icon.

I like that there is an option to disable adult language.  Without it enabled the cute creatures will say thing like “You *sshole” or “oh sh*t!” in cutesy voices.  There isn’t a disable blasphemy option as the creatures regularly say OMG and the dialogue says that they go to meet the flying spaghetti god when they die.  While the dialogue is funny, it has some heroin references which I felt were unnecessary.  The excessive blood and gore can be a bit over the top as well. 

If it wasn’t for the blood spraying everywhere and the dismemberment of these creatures, this would be a rather cute game.  The 2D graphics are colorful and adequately detailed.  The level editor is relatively easy to use once all of the unlabeled buttons are figured out

The sound effects are fitting and the voices of these creatures are cute despite their cussing, which again can be disabled.  The background music switches from peppy Sonic style to mellow Joe Satriani style music to rock music for the boss battles.  While there is some variety, it does loop fairly often.  Thankfully, I enjoyed all of the tracks and didn’t mind hearing them again.  

If the language and excessive violence don’t bother you, Cute Things Dying Violently may be worth picking up for less than a dollar on mobile devices or for three dollars on PC/Mac/Steam.  The level editor is easy enough for a kid to use but due to the gore and drug references it’s probably best for them to stick to Angry Birds.