As part of the game Rat On The Run there was a fun little mini-game where you played the rat driving a scooter, and you kept driving and jumping until you missed a platform.  Apparently I wasn’t the only one that liked that mini-game, because the developers have taken their fans’ wishes to heart and created a full blown game based off of that sequence.  It’s called, appropriately enough, Rat On A Scooter XL.  It’s still the same simple mechanics and the same addictive fun, but now there are three ways to play.  Go rat!

As the name so subtly implies, you are a rat, and you’re on a scooter.  Luckily you managed to get one of those scooters that doesn’t require any pedals to be pressed, because you’re not quite tall enough for that.  Anyway, you happen to be out joyriding in a place that is coincidentally filled with random platforms of various sizes and inclinations, and your task is to keep driving until you misstep and plummet to some unseen doom.  Controlling the game is a simple affair.  The scooter moves automatically, so all you need to do is press the screen to jump, and press it again in midair to get an extra little boost if need be.  You can heighten your initial jump to some extent by keeping your finger pressed down on the screen, so the trick is to determine whether a quick tap or longer hold will be more appropriate for whatever gap is coming up.

There are three different games you can play in Rat On A Scooter XL.  The first is Super Cheese XL, and in this game you are tasked with collecting all the cheese you can find.  The smaller bits of cheese (which look oddly like potato chips to me) are worth one point, and the large, glowing chunks of cheese are worth three.  In Fuel Depot you have a gas meter that’s constantly running down, and you must collect gas cans to refill it.  This appears to be the odd man odd for scoring, as it seems the only way you can score is by actually touching a platform.  The final game is Skill Course.  In this one you get five points for each green flag you touch, but you lose a point for each cone you hit.  In both Super Cheese and Skill Course you can earn an extra point each time you “grind”, which is the act of catching a platform by your front tire such that you are basically only hanging on to the platform with that tire.

The background is a nice silhouetted cityscape, with a multi-hued sky that looks like the sun is setting.  The foreground is pretty sparse, comprised mainly of the platforms, the objects you need to collect and of course the rat and the scooter.  However, it’s still the pixel-y goodness we love from Donut Games’ games, and as much as makes sense things are animated.  The main sound effect is the sputtering of the scooter, though there are various noises when you pick up objects and a wonderfully annoying grating sound when you grind.  Much like Action Hero, the music takes somewhat of a back seat in this game, but it’s still good from what I can hear.

Now I realize this is going to come as a shock to those of you that have been following my iPhone reviews for any length of time, but this is a Donut Games game and I like it.  Bet you didn’t see that one coming, did you?  The game looks good, it’s simple to play, and you always feel like it will only take one more try to beat that last high score.  I just hope there’s more rat goodness in store for future games.

Final Verdict: Recommended
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