After the last lick, the weasel dies. His head is mine. I sneak back into my nest and tuck this new head onto my strangely thick duck neck. Then I take off, fluttering and flapping my beetle wings and legs. I give the Oscar to the grumpy guy in the basket who sells animal body parts for crystals. Ahead lies a giant salamander wearing a fedora. He asks me to go and steal some eggs from the queen ant, who is wearing a real crown. I refuse. We are fighting. He continues to whistle, looking for help. My weasel bites off its head, an expression of outright horror written on its mustache.
This, in so many words, is Strange Seedthe full version of which was released yesterday and also contains a demo version that I tried for this article. It's a cartoonish evolutionary killing fest from developers Chronicle Games, who reference EVO: Search for Eden and Sporethe creation scene as their inspiration.
I'm quite young and therefore haven't had time to play any of these games. I still find Strange Seed delightfully strange and incredibly charming. Well, at least when I manage to not think too much about what its central loop entails. You start out as a purple blob that falls from a tree and rather hilariously sets about replacing your body parts with those of the creatures that inhabit the forest.
You kill these creatures and other blobs by licking, biting or attacking them and they turn into a piece of meat on a bone. You consume it for health, biomass which will allow you to equip more animal parts, and the animal parts themselves. You can talk to some. For example, at the beginning you meet a lonely duck. He will only let you be his friend if you have a long duck neck. You kill another duck, rip the neck off its piece of dead meat, and voila, he's your friend. For five seconds, after which you kill him to get more duck parts.
To equip new parts you require a socket and I'd probably risk pissing people off by comparing them to Elden Ringplaces of grace. These are short-term respite spots that act as spawn points throughout the world and also allow you to switch out the equipment of animal parts. What you equip is limited by what you've found, as well as how many biomass pieces you've earned from kills and research, with some animal parts being more effective but taking up more of your biomass limit while they're active.
As you explore, you will also find power-ups that will allow you to increase the mass of a body part. They all offer boots with different features, and the health is related to your neck. So, if you think like me, chances are your head will end up on a tree trunk. Though that might just be because I'm a little bad at timing my licks and attacks to quickly take down fairly powerful bugs. So far I've found one boss – a salamander who talks like the Cockney gangster I mentioned earlier. Before I can defeat him, I'll have to work on the kills a little more.
Although it is quite possible that I will eventually do it. Despite the constant bizarre body horror, Strange Seed has a chuckle-worthy charisma that hasn't quite rubbed off on me yet and is still annoying in the right ways rather than annoying in terms of performance. You can watch the demo at Steam if it sounds in your alley.
