Freddy Spaghetti Review

Freddy Spaghetti is a fun 3D animated adventure game published by Ratalaika games and developed by Playful Pasta. Freddy’s story begins with the scientist Dr. P Starr, who is trying to project consciousness onto an inanimate object and is the narrator for the game. While cooking he came across a Spaghetti noodle that seemed to be alive. He experimented on the noodle and named it Freddy. And so we begin.

The game is very simple in design, but can become harder for a few of the levels the player comes across, though it never strays too far from the known Ratalaika-style difficulty formula. The beginning of the game is simple and teaches the player how to move around as a spaghetti noodle. The only controls to worry about are steering your noodle with the left toggle stick and using either the bumpers or triggers to fling Freddy along. You can even charge how hard you want to fling one side of Freddy to help him flip in the desired direction and the game manages this with rope physics.

There is also UI that shows what side we are flinging with a green and yellow dot on each end of Freddy to help orient ourselves with our left and right. Using these simple controls can prove difficult though when trying to climb stairs or cross a street and avoid cars.

There are 5 sets of levels, each set containing 10 levels per area. Freddy’s goal is simple; get him to the highlighted blue or red portals without him coming to harm. Different types of danger come in the form of people chasing you, or falling on the floor. If you happen to burn Freddy, he becomes overcooked. All act as a death screen in a humorous way and we must restart the level if failing, but not every level is filled with danger.

After the first ten levels, Freddy learns what he his and unleashes chaos on society by heading to the streets – at least, the player thinks so. Dr. P Starr seems to have created a digital world for Freddy to live in and this is why Freddy increases in size and shrinks again in later levels. It’s also how Freddy goes to the future and also the past. Some of the levels require the player to destroy some type of objects before the end portal spawns, but most of the time you will just be moving along in one general direction.

I was confused briefly in a City level, eventually figuring out I had to destroy the fire hydrants along the road, but none of the levels require any puzzle solving and become clear how to progress with hints from the narrator. Some of the levels felt as if they were just filler levels since there are no threat, and Freddy just has to make it to the portal. All 50 levels are pretty easy to get through in about an hour and a half. Since Freddy can take his time on platforming levels, very few will be hard for someone just picking up the game.

The game doesn’t increase in difficulty after mastering running away from the police or mobs of hungry futurists, but the platforming does. Any level that involves platforming skills might be tricky, but there is no rush in beating it with no threat of death other than falling to your demise. The only bug I found while playing through the game was if you happen to land on an edge, you’ll struggle to recover and can even sometimes get stuck hanging and have to restart. Fortunately, all the levels are short though so this small bug never became a game breaking feature.

The graphics of Freddy Spaghetti is of a 3D animated world with polygonal model designs. The game is quite full of color, but it’s never hard to spot our noodle. I noticed on the Frogger-type of levels that some of the road lines appeared as if they were actually above Freddy, but this didn’t harm the gameplay in any way. In later levels Freddy is even pixelated and proves to be a challenge for the doctor to contain. The audio in Freddy Spaghetti is filled with music made for each area but not all of the levels will start to play their specific song immediately. This is probably a good feature to have so the songs never become a nuisance. Some levels even have Freddy flop around on a piano to play a song or a keyboard so he can search for answers to some deep philosophical questions to life. The sound effects while playing Freddy Spaghetti are noises of him screaming and yelling if being flung and whooshing noises as he splats forward with speed. The main menu theme music is relaxing with simple piano and drum beats.

Freddy Spaghetti is of much higher quality than most Ratalaika published games I have played in the past and genuinely feels like a breath of fresh air in their game library. Compared to the platformers or visual novels that have been published by them, the care and attention to detail put into Freddy Spaghetti to a much higher degree. I enjoyed this game for the short amount of time I played it and managed to earn all 55 achievements for the full 1,000 gamerscore, and finished Freddy’s peculiar journey. All of the achievements are linked to beating each level and then beating five extra bonus levels at the main menu after the story.

The bonus levels are designed to be more joke levels than real levels, such as the sandbox level that just loads a sandbox with a pail in it, and you can hear Freddy laugh before it ends. Three of the other bonus levels are like level 10 in the story, and require Freddy to search something on the keyboard, each level being a different search with a comical result image. The bonus levels fit this comedic adventure game and adds more humor to an already ludicrous game. I enjoyed flopping and swooshing around as Freddy using the rope physics and that’s all you can ask for from a game about a piece of pasta that’s also reasonably priced. As for the longevity of the game, I can see a small community fall in love with this game and would love to watch people speed run it. It would be hard to beat in one go with little errors, thus making it a great game to stream. I don’t think I’ll find myself coming back to this game in the immediate future, but won’t rule it out entirely. It’s a fun and cheap game to play, but doesn’t offer much after beating it.

Conclusion

Freddy Spaghetti combines the ever popular mad-cap physics gameplay with an equally outlandish story and level set up to great effect. Some of the levels feel too much like padding, and the nature of the gameplay can lead to a few instances of annoyance, but overall this is a fun title for those looking for something simple, but different.

This game was reviewed based on Xbox One review code, using an Xbox One console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.