

While some levels are mercifully over in seconds, others can take minutes and a failure that doesn’t feel within your control isn’t funny anymore. The loose movement could be forgiven if it was funny to fail, but instead of being able pick yourself up you have to start over. I’ve heard of rocket in my salad but this is ridiculous!

Playing as spaghetti is funny for a while, but when the game repeatedly gives you challenges that depend on precision platforming or timing your movements, suddenly the randomness of the controls is infuriating instead of funny. With such a wide selection of game types though there’s quite a few duds, and for every level that made me laugh there was another where it was far too frustrating to achieve the goal. You’ll be avoiding missiles, googling your own mortality, playing Frogger, and tackling some even weirder challenges across the length of the game. It’s a short game but it tells a story with each new level and world, with some truly weird challenges in a few of them. So luckily this is a game much more focused on the comedy than being a competent platformer, and despite some strange choices it mainly achieves its goal. It’s a big world for pasta, and being this small can get cannelloni. To control Freddy you use the analog sticks and triggers to move either end of him, with more wishful thinking than precision. Spaghetti isn’t very nimble, so it’s not an easy thing to control, and the struggle is similar to another food-based platformer, I Am Bread.

Especially when moving around is so difficult. Falling down from kitchen cabinets repeatedly or having to play a level again because you didn’t know what you were doing isn’t fun. It’s one thing being left to explore, but another being left aimless with the only way to learn being failure. Despite some charming narration the game’s many levels often place you in a room to find your own objective, save a few obvious outliers. But is this piece of pasta in need of that special sauce?Īt the outset I found Freddy Spaghetti to be an exercise in frustration. It’s as bonkers as it sounds and only gets weirder, as while Freddy is initially confined to explore the house of the professor who made him, you’ll soon be exploring the world and causing havoc. The latest from publishers Ratalaika, Freddy Spaghetti is a physics-based platformer where you control a sentient piece of spaghetti named Freddy. Again, it’s ridiculous but fun.Pasta has brought a lot of comfort to my life, so I was fairly intrigued to hear about a game where it would also bring me some comedy. Controlling Freddy works best in the levels where he has space to operate: these include rampaging through some local gardens destroying every violet in sight, or jumping onto the tops of cars to set off their alarms. One end of him ended up getting wrapped around the gate, or he would coil up – meaning it was too late to pass through without being detected. Some blind luck helped in the end, however I struggled to control Freddy accurately enough to pass through the gate undetected before the sensors came back on. For example, there is a level where you have to pass through a couple of metal detector gates (although they seem to detect spaghetti too), which took me quite a few attempts to complete. However, as the levels get more difficult they expose the inaccuracies of the controls when trying to navigate a cramped space. You can gather some proper momentum if you time moving each end of Freddy well, which sees him break into a sort of spaghetti sprint, if such a thing exists. If you hold both bumpers or triggers down at the same time, and release them, Freddy will launch himself into the air followed by a “whoopeee”, which is incredibly cute for reasons unknown.

If you hold these down, you can charge a jump meter to move quicker and clear gaps. For example, the left bumper or trigger can be used to move the left end of Freddy, whilst using the left thumbstick to aim in the direction you want him to go. The triggers and bumpers on each side of your controller will manipulate each corresponding end of Freddy. In terms of controlling Freddy, it’s simple to get to grips with but more challenging to master.
