Oddy Smog's Misadventure Review

Oddy Smog's Midadventure is a beautiful game—and, happily, also a really fun one. You play a little black smudge named Oddy Smog in his quest to escape his old life of dreary service to the System. To do so, you must cling and jump between the different cogs, each time trying to get higher...and higher...and higher...

Oddy can do two things: grab onto cogs and jump. You press the right side of the screen to latch onto any of the machine's spinning cogs, and release to send Oddy flying. To jump, you press the left side of the screen. Oddy can only jump once before landing on some surface. If you land on a wall, he'll climb a bit first, however. You have to keep moving, because the black smog slowly creeps from the ground...and if you sink into it, that's Game Over.

The chute in Oddy Smog's Misadventure is populated with cogs. Most are a standard red-orange, and spin somewhat slowly. As you ascend, more types of cogs appear: large silver ones that act like trampolines, purple ones that spin horizontally across the chute, bright yellow-orange cogs that spin quickly, and more. You'll also find black smog-smudged like Oddy chained to the walls. Hit them, and you'll set them free and give Oddy a little height boost. Your score multiplier at the end of the game is equal to how many prisoners you save.

The point of the entire game is thus twofold: climb as high as possible, and free as many smogs as possible. It's a simple premise, and the result is a fun game that you can easily play over and over again. Swinging upward from gear to gear is great fun. It doesn't hurt that the artwork is so gorgeous, or that the music is fantastic. I do wish the game kept track of more than one high score, but the amusing stats panel is good enough. (It tracks things like the number of Epic Fails.) Oddy Smog's Misadventure is easily addictive. Make sure to watch the video to see the game in its beautiful, soaring action.