Don’t Feed the Trolls Review

Don’t Feed the Trolls is a nice little 80MP gem for you, ideal for spending the small amount of Microsoft Points you have left over from buying a 400MP or 800MP Arcade game on the Xbox Live Marketplace. As you can probably guess, the objective of the game is not to feed the trolls. Sounds simple? Well it really isn’t.

The game takes place on a set of four islands, there is an island to the left, right, top and bottom of the screen. The aim of the game is similar to the Wack the Mole game that I’m sure you remember from your childhood years. Basically, you need to feed the bears (and super bears for more points!) by pressing X, Y, B or A (depending on what island they’re on). So if a bear appears on the left island, you’ll press X to feed it. Pressing Y will feed whatever’s on the top island, B for right and A for bottom, you get the idea. Each bear only appears on his island for a second or so, meaning you’ll need to press the right button the second he pops up; feeding an empty island will see you lose a small amount of points.

Occasionally, instead of a bear, a troll will pop up on an island, and as they look quite similar to the bears, it’s quite hard to decide which is which in the split second you have to press the right button. Choosing a troll will see you lose 200 points, you’re also only allowed to feed three trolls before it is game over. Tricky stuff, guys. The game gets considerably harder every level, and more types of bears are added too (I’ll go into that later). To lose the game you only have to miss 10 bears and feed 3 trolls by accident, and those stats don’t reset for every level either. Tricky.

Now let’s get onto the different type of bears, there’s a few but the main once are Bear, Speedy Bear and Tricky Bear. The first of these is just a normal, everyday bear, they pop up for a second or two and then disappear and they look pretty different from a troll. A Speedy Bear pops up for less than a second at a time, it wears a few sweatbands too because it’s all speedy an’ stuff, cool. The Tricky Bear is, as its name suggests, pretty damn tricky, they look quite similar to a troll, but you must feed it as it is still a bear.

The game’s graphics are what you’d expect, they’re two dimensional, but that’s all you need for a game of this type; it works quite nicely. The game’s sound is also appropriate, although I feel the game could have benefited from a soundtrack, as in its current state, you only hear a small sound for feeding a troll or bear.

To finish, the game is pretty entertaining if you’re looking to kill five minutes here or there, and although it is relatively addictive, I doubt you’d want to play it for any length of time. A great mini-game, but nothing more.

REVIEW CODE: A complimentary Microsoft Xbox 360 code was provided to Brash Games for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to editor@brashgames.co.uk.