Cash Cow is the latest game I’m reviewing from Pixel Games, who previously brought us Donut Dodo and Sigi A Fart for Melusina, both of which I’ve covered before.
I’ve liked both of those games, and have really enjoyed Donut Dodo in particular. It’s one of my favourite games of the last few years. But is Cash Cow DX a worthy follow up? Does it even need to be? Let’s find out!
So, Cash Cow DX is a 2D pixel art platform game where you play as the titular Cash Cow who runs around the level and has to collect all the treasure to complete the stage. You collect the treasure to reach 100% and when done, you go on to the next level.
The game is initially challenging, but quickly becomes the same type of ‘one more play’ level of difficulty that Donut Dodo is. The game feels like a natural follow up to Donut Dodo, but while it has some things in common with that game, it has just as many things that are quite different to make this feel like it’s own game. But it’s certainly more in the same wheelhouse as Donut Dodo than it is like Pixel games previous titles.
Similar to Dodo, Cash Cow DX shows its love to games of the past throughout. Unlike Donut Dodo, this game’s stages don’t take place on single screens, but are still quite small and compact in scope. There is no end point, and are like stretched out longer versions of the stages from the original Mario Bros game. And that is the original Mario Bros, not Super Mario Bros. There are green warp pipes at the sides which will transport you back to the other side of the level.
The game features four enemy characters. Three of these are common enemies and are Speedy Spikey, Rolly Ronny and Bouncy Bobby. Bouncy Bobby kinda reminds me of QBert, but I think all three with their pig noses are meant to be pig themed. The main villain Party Piggy, only appears in the final level and doesn’t do anything to attack you like the others. When you reach the final level and collect all the treasure you’ll have to defeat Party Piggy by destroying his loud speakers.
The game features big loops for you to go around like in Sonic, a pickaxe which you can pick up to be able to temporarily defeat enemies like on Donkey Kong, and there is a mine cart themed level which instantly brings Donkey Kong Country’s mine carts to mind. Although I’m sure other games made use of mine carts. Resident Evil 4 and the Amiga Hugo game come to mind.
You can’t defeat enemies without the pickaxe, and generally speaking you can’t jump to higher platforms. The trampoline level enables you to reach higher ground, but otherwise you’ll have to drop off the bottom of the screen and then fall back into the top of the stage to navigate your way around.
The levels each have a bit of a theme, although most feel very similar. After the initial level with the Sonic like loops, you have a trampoline themed level, a boat themed level, the mine cart level and a zip line themed level.
Each level can probably beaten in one to two minutes if you’re really fast, but whilst you can aim to rush through, dodging enemies takes a little getting used to as the green enemy Speedy Spikey will often appear out of nowhere and crash into you. The game does give you a warning if an enemy is about to appear on screen though, so you have to look out for these indicators.
I can tell this is a game I’m going to keep coming back to like I did with Donut Dodo, and think it was intentional to follow the short game where you can aim for a high score type design. Once you’re good, you can expect to get through the whole game on whichever difficulty level in less than ten minutes. You can pick up large chaos emeralds looking gems that double the score with any treasure you pick up for a short while after. This is a key part of the strategy as you get an extra life with every 1000,000 points.
As well as going for the high score, once you’ve beaten easy mode, you unlock a faster paced and more challenging normal difficulty, and once that is conquered, you’ll I click hard mode. There’s also a couple of other modes for score attacks.
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