Sigi – A Fart for Melusina

Developer: pixel.lu
Publisher: pixel.lu
Developed and published by the Luxembourgish indie studio pixel.lu, Sigi – A Fart for Melusina is a 2D action platformer with beautiful and colorful pixel art graphics in which you play as the Knight Sigi in his quest to save his beloved Melusina. First released for PC in 2017, now we can help our mustachioed knight to rescue his dear princess. (No this isn’t a Mario-game)  But stay alert: our hero shall face hundreds of enemies and many dangers in his path while eating tons of weenies. Prepare your nose for a stinky and funny adventure!

What do you do?

Sigi – A Fart for Melusina is an old-school 2D platformer with a very simple premise: you advance from left to right, level after level, dispatching enemies, looting for treasures and accumulating riches, while eating some hot dogs. After a few levels, you’ll face funny and tough bosses (no spoilers, but even famous wrestlers can show up to challenge you) to rescue your beloved Melusina.

What is Good?

• Visuals: With beautiful and colorful 2D retro-style graphics, Sigi is a pleasant game to watch and play. Scenarios are simple and a little repetitive, but with beautiful backgrounds. Forests, the sky full of clouds and caves are very nice and detailed. The same can be said about your enemies: there are few kinds (between zombies, bats, crows, ghosts and a few others), but they are all well detailed and animated.
• Sound: The music that accompanies Sigi during your quest is quite enjoyable. It has that retro feeling from the 8bit/16bits era that most of old-school gamers love. Sound effects are simple but good. The one which stands out the most is the sound of his farts,
• Gameplay: The gameplay is simple and objective. From a world map, you select a stage to conquer. Once inside it, you will use your weapons or jump on enemies (like that Italian plumber) to advance stage after stage. Try to accumulate as many lives as possible be it collecting coins (each hundred coins grants you one extra life) and shields. To reach 100% completion, you’ll need to collect the four letters of your name in each stage, to locate all secret caves and find the lost relics scattered in some stages.
• Weapons: Our hero can use a good variety of weapons to dispatch foes: you can collect in stages swords, daggers, bolas or even chicken legs. Use whatever you find in your journey to eliminate the threats you came across. And don’t worry about saving ammo: all weapons you find have unlimited ammo.
• Easy 1000G: This one goes for the completionists: You can easily unlock all its achievements in two runs (one if you are fast and know what to do). So, if you’re looking for a boost in your gamerscore, here’s a good option.

Mixed Feelings

• Humor: Sigi is a light humored adventure, with jokes and puns here and there. Especially when you fall in battle and respawn. His farts, though, are pointless to the story. I expected more relevance to them in the story, but they’re a cheap joke that soon you will get tired of.
• Too easy: Except for the bosses, I feel the game lacks a little challenge. I finished it three times before writing this review and, after the first time, and memorizing the position of enemies (and how to beat the bosses), I missed that challenge from the first time. And even this first time wasn’t that challenging at all.

What is Bad?

• Short: Being so funny and so enjoyable, it’s a pity the game is so short. You can finish it in one sit, playing non-stop, in about one hour (less if you’re playing a speedrun… there’s an achievement for finishing it in less than 30 minutes). The game could easily have, at least, two or three times its original length and still be very pleasant.
• Lacks replay value: Since you can finish it fast and the game doesn’t add any new feature (except for the option to select stages) for a second run, if you aren’t aiming for the achievements, there’s really no reason to go back to the beginning for a second run.

Sigi – A Fart for Melusina [Score: 71/100]: With great gameplay, good visuals and sense of humor, Sigi – a Fart for Melusina is an action adventure no plumber will complain about. The only downside about it is the length of the game: as you can finish it in less than one hour, it really feels like there could be much more content on it.