Indie Arcade: Till Cows Tear Us Apart

3/2/2015

Space Trucking

Welcome to February's edition of Indie Arcade! This month I wanted to highlight an adventure game and another game from the Space Cowboy Game Jam. This time around I am taking a look at Till Cows Tear us Apart, a choose your own adventure game.

Premise

In Till Cows Tear us Apart you guide our heroines, Quanee Oxentine and Enora Bey through space.

We join our characters right after they acquired fifteen cows. They are now on their way to deliver the cows for a big payday, but of course along the way they run into a few interesting characters and obstacles.

The game unfolds over seven chapters and there are five possible endings.

Art and Design

Art and Animation in the game is simple, yet charming. The pixel art is clean and everything comes across loud and clear. The cast of characters are all visually interesting, I especially like how Enora looks like she is going to a music festival. Seriously though, the characters designs are cool.

The entirety of the game takes place on board our heroine's ship. There is no background, but the characters expression changes as they react to your dialog choices and occasionally you can see Enora steering the ship. Something that came off as kind of funny to me, the steering wheel to the ship looks like it belongs in a car.

   Design wise the game is very straight forward. You click the mouse to continue reading the dialogue between the characters and occasionally you get to a moment in the story where you must make a decision.

   The game is divided into 7 chapters. Inside of each chapter you are given a few different dialog choices and from these choices the story unfolds.

I played through the game twice and got to the same ending in two different ways. I also found out that the game could have ended much quicker if I would have made a few bad decisions.
On your adventure your only form of currency are the cows you are trying to deliver. You start off with fifteen cows and depending on your choices you can sell or lose cows. What happens when you run out of cows? I Couldn't tell you, I never lost all of my cows.

The game is great for people that like a solid narrative. The game play is just clicking the screen and making your choices. There are no quick time events, or button mashing that you might find in other choose your own adventure games.

Cons

There aren't any real cons or negative aspects to this game. The only negative I can say is that the spaceship is rather plain, although the rest of the game is solid. I did not encounter any glitches when I played.

Till The Cows Come Home

I played through this game twice. My first session was about twenty minutes and my second one was about fifteen. The dialog and characters kept me interested. I would recommend this game for anyone that likes games with a lot of focus on story and characters.

At the end of the day, I still want to see what happens to our heroines. I can see this game becoming an episodic adventure, which is something I would totally play.

So what are you waiting for? The cows aren't going to deliver themselves.