Review Sigi A Fart for Melusina

A flatulent noble after a date with a mermaid, not your typical Knight's Tale. Sigi is a short and silly platformer that takes the spirit of Ghosts and Goblins, dials down the difficulty and ramps up the daft factor. A bit of jumping, some well aimed shots and keeping an eye out for the odd mystery item and you've completed an early level in a matter of seconds.

Sigi must travel across 20-odd short levels, finding the secret rooms and objects along the way, defeating the peculiar bosses every few levels. The GnG spirit comes with the range of weapons you can use, but the first dozen levels are pretty much a cakewalk, except for wondering if each drop in the ground will reveal a secret or instant death.

With cannons to fire you across levels, clouds and tyres for tricky jumps, there's a little variety in exploring, but really its all about the rush to collect lives and defeat the four major enemies.

The bosses, you need to hit from one side, or in the right place to wear them down. They provide the only real obstacle in the game, and you should stack up plenty of lives (collecting the letters of SIGI's name, collecting 100 coins and so on) over the levels to stand a better chance to batter them. But if you do die, then restarting on the boss level annoyingly leaves you very short of lives to take the beasts down.

With charming graphics, and a jolly chiptune theme, Sigi looks the part, but the mechanics don't feel tight enough and that can slow you down through uncertainty. Battling through zombies, skeletons and the annoying crows is fun for a while but they can really annoyingly get in the way during boss battles.

Clearly, Pixel-lu is destined for bigger and greater things with Plutonium Pirates and Bobby Bombastic on the way, so I guess as an intro to those Sigi is a worthwhile experience, and if you were ever a GnG fan that found Capcom's games too hard, this might make a welcome alternative.

But, its not quite clever or tight enough to be a compelling game, and if it was any more than a few quid, I'd be rather down on it, but as a cheap-and-cheerful experimental release, Sigi is well worth a quick blast.

Score: 6/10
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Price: £3.99 (PSN)
Developer/publisher Pixel.lu/Sometimes You/
File size 91MB
Progress: Knight, knight