Splash Cars

When I heard that a game called Splash Cars was coming from the same publisher as the infamous Drunken Fist, part of me expected it to be a simulator where you drive through puddles in order to splash unsuspecting pedestrians. While that might have been a fun game, I'm glad that this brand-new racer went in a different direction. What we have here is an overhead action game where the goal is to paint the drab black and white world with vibrant colors simply by driving around. It's like Splatoon meets Grand Theft Auto. It's a fun little game that's easy to pick up and play, but is there enough depth to keep you playing? That's what I intend to find out in this review of Splash Cars.

Splash Cars is the kind of game that would have fit in perfectly at the arcade in the early 1980s. It's a lot like popular maze games of the era, like Pac-Man and Rally-X, only in reverse. Instead of picking up every last dot, the goal is to completely fill in the level with color by driving around and splashing everything with paint. And when I say everything, I mean it. We're talking roads, houses, strip malls, picket fences, shipping crates, trees, bushes and anything else that the developers could possibly fit into a level. Your job is to paint it all.

Of course, it's not going to be that easy. For one thing, you're using up a lot of gas driving around these isolated stages. The game ends when you run out of fuel, so a lot of the game revolves around picking up gas cans as you splash paint everywhere. It may not be much, but this added fuel will keep you going a few seconds longer, and that might be all you need. The other thing you have to worry about is the police. Don't worry, the cops can't arrest you for painting the city, but they can smash your car into walls and other obstacles. As we take on more damage, our trusty paint-spewing car slows down to a crawl.

Now, it's worth mentioning that we don't have a whole lot of control over the car. As soon as the level starts, so does the accelerating, whether you like it or not. There are no brakes in this car, so the best you can do is steer left and right in order to swerve around police and other obstacles. This is easier said than done, especially as the stages get more cluttered with objects to run into.

And since the splash range is relatively small, it means that you'll need to get close to a lot of buildings, trees and fences to color them in, making an already dangerous job that much more precarious.

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The good news is that there are all kinds of useful power-ups scattered around the levels. One of them will act as a giant magnet sucking in nearby coins and gas cans, while another will speed our car up, allowing us to cover a lot more area. There are also items that will shrink our vehicle, as well as blow it up to absurd levels. Some of the power-ups will allow you to evade the police, such as an item that will freeze the cops in place and another one that will make you invisible to all radars. Also, you can play as a tank, complete with shooting paint rounds at the level.

That tank isn't just an item you can pick-up mid-splash, because it's also one of the vehicles you can purchase. A lot of this game revolves around you buying better and better cars, as that's what will determine the gas tank and speed. You might be able to get one or two stars on the first level with the starter vehicle, but if you hope to unlock new stages and finish the challenges, then you're going to need a new car. I had a lot of fun taking my new rides to previous levels, where all of a sudden I had plenty of speed and gas to get three stars. You won't need to own every single vehicle in the showroom to beat this game, but you're definitely going to have most of them by the end.

The problem is that there are quite a few times when it feels like you will need to own a better car to have a chance of unlocking the next stage, yet the only way to get enough money for the better car is to grind a bunch of previous levels. This is where the inherent shallowness of the concept begins to rear its ugly head. The game will go from a light and fun arcade-style action game to a boring and repetitive chore.

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It doesn't help that the levels are so similar that they start to blur together after a while. Sure, the stages range in size and take place in a number of locations, but you'll recognize a lot of the repeating buildings and objects. Even the pursing police force looks the same. I kept waiting for them to go full Grand Theft Auto and bring out the helicopters and tanks, but they never take the game in that direction. That's not to say that the stages don't get more difficult, because they certainly do. But it's never in a way that shakes up the action in any meaningful ways.

Much like those old arcade games that it emulates, Splash Cars is the kind of game you pick up and play for a few minutes here and there. As fun as the action is, it doesn't work well in long marathon sessions. It's repetitive and a bit on the shallow side, but also exciting and great in small doses. And no matter how many flaws I point out, Splash Cars is a steal at seven dollars. If you love old school maze games or just running from the police, then this game is for you.