Being an 80’s baby and growing up in the 90’s, it was a time when companies were coming up with quirky new ideas in order to entice the younger audience. We had the likes of Pogs, Saturday morning cartoons and a plethora of action figures that we could play with. One toy, in particular however, stood out on its own and that was the Sticky Hand. For those who don’t know about the Sticky Hand, it was a toy that allowed you to throw a stretchy-like hand at an object and that hand would stick to it. This would allow you to do such thing as grab a paper off of a desk or take money from your parents wallet, that is of course if you mastered the techniques. The toy became so widespread that even today, we still see its usage and one great example is in Zoink Games’ Stick it to The Man. Unlike the actual toy itself that can only stick to objects in the physical realm, Stick it to The Man allows you to traverse around a world and use this sticky hand to read the minds of others in a very humorous fashion.

Stick it to The Man is a platformer title that implements a ton of puzzle elements to challenge you, as you race around this colorful world in search for answers. Just like those good old days of throwing Sticky Hands at random things, you, too, can perform such actions in this game but on a more strategic level. You can’t steal your parents’ money or grab test papers off the desk, but in Stick it to The Man, you’re able to look into the minds of the enemy and use their thoughts against them. This creates a unique element that can only be found in this game and is what makes playing so fun, that is once you get the hang of how to use the Sticky Hand properly. We’ll go into more detail in the gameplay section but for now, expect to have a lot of fun picking apart people’s thoughts and gathering the right resources to solve tricky puzzles and avoid being caught by corrupt investigators.

Life is all cool for hard hat tester Ray as he continues to enjoy his job, and is inspired by his father to keep going. One day, however, as he and an associate were testing the hard hats, one of these hard hats didn’t really protect Ray’s head all that well and knocked him out entirely. The minute Ray snaps back into reality, he seems to feel no weird symptoms. That is until he notices a long pink stretchy hand sticking out of his head. With his curiosity peaked, Ray decides to learn more about this peculiar object protruding from out of his head, but is then sidetracked when he’s been put under surveillance watch and is now a criminal. Ray finds himself on the run from the cops for a crime he didn’t commit, and so now, he must use these newfound abilities to avoid being caught and save the world from corruption.

Stick it to The Man is certainly a unique title and to be honest, never in the years of playing video games has a game like this been created. That’s a great thing because it takes advantage of the Switch in a wonderful way, allowing you to use both the touch screen and normal controls to get obtain stickers, rip down walls, and evade being caught by investigators. One thing that really stood out to us from the get go was the overall design of the game. The art direction that Zoink Games took with this is quite interesting because it felt like the game was a moving comic book, which reminded us of Comix Zone for the Genesis but more fluid. The character details were simple and yet, they felt real and not contrived in any way. Things felt fleshed out, especially during conversations between you and other characters throughout the game. The satire just gave the game more value and really complimented the art style exceptionally well. As you run through this crazy dream-like world filled with hues of purples and yellows, you come to feel more attached to everything (no pun here), and the deeper you go, the more is slowly revealed to you.

The puzzle elements in the game start off pretty simple but then eventually start to increase in difficulty and will require you to collect stickers from people around you in order to move onto the next chapter. Racing around trying to solve everything was so fun and getting to know each character and their backstory provided more appeal. The game had us laughing with the psychologist and his very clever yet oftentimes goofy approach to trying to uncover what Ray’s problem, and his random relationships. These types of character engagements are what we love most and truly stuck with us. The level designs were some of the best we’ve seen in most Switch platformer titles, using a plethora of color schemes to give off different emotions that Ray is going through and just look vibrant on the Switch’s screen.

What makes the game challenging, however, are the controls, which to us, felt a little flimsy at times. There were moments when we wanted to latch onto a thumbtack and the game would just totally ignore it and we’d fall to our deaths. This became a little more apparent in the later parts of the game where using these thumbtacks to escape became imperative, and not being able to grab onto them was a little frustrating. Despite aiming correctly at them, the game just simply wouldn’t respond and so we found ourselves having to mash out or rotate the right analog to ensure we were fine. This, of course, is an integral part of the gameplay and so in a way, it sort of took the fun out of playing. Mind you Stick it to The Man is not terrible at all; In fact, we actually like the game a lot. It’s just that when the controls fail to respond at pivotal moments, it really starts to poke at you and you just want to walk away from it for a while.

When grabbing onto stickers and walls, however, things seem to work perfectly fine which made us wonder if everything was fine tuned correctly. That inconsistency led to some issues down the road but nevertheless we got used to it and kept going. There were also some moments when Ray and another character would have a discussion during a scene, only for their dialogue to stop abruptly. Of course, this is nothing big, but it’s still something worth mentioning. This is an indie game so of course, it’s only natural to have some bumps along the way. One cool aspect, however, was how you could slow down or fast forward the discussion by moving the right analog in either direction, so in case you wanted to get moving onto the next mission you can fast forward things.

In the end, Stick it to The Man definitely had its finer moments pertaining to the story, but the finicky controls and repetitive speech from characters at times kind of docked a few points in our book. Again the game isn’t terrible, it just needs a little bit of refinement to ensure that players don’t run into control issues down the road. We really enjoyed scaling up walls like Spiderman and laughed a ton during the final chapters, so there’s plenty to experience in the game once you look past the flaws. It’s not an expensive game either so we suggest picking it up and giving it a shot and see if it sticks with you in the end. The game lasts long enough to get some enjoyment out of it, but perhaps adding more content down the road would provide more incentive to come back and replay it.

2017 has been a year of indie games and it’s great to see new talent coming out to showcase their skills. Shoutouts to Zoink Games for Stick it to The Man and providing us with a unique experience. We know that nothing is ever perfect and so, it’s best to evaluate things from all angles, so hopefully next time we can look forward to something more exciting from the team. Be sure to follow Honey’s Anime on Twitter and Facebook to stay up to date about all the latest gaming, anime and manga news. Follow us on Twitch as well to know when we go live and play all the latest titles, and showcase upcoming games from developers!

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