Many kids love seals and are usually mad at the eskimos who hunt them since seals are adorable and very cute. One day, a hero popped up in the Arctic and started clubbing seal clubbers for revenge and cash since human skin hides are pretty profitable. Armed with only one close-ranged weapon, a wooden club, and its cute black eyes as round as a ball, the hero is unmistakable. Its name is, Clubby the Seal.

Clubby the Seal is a platform beat em’ up game and you play the titular character, beating up those who have killed the other cute seals and their babies which will grow into them. As in many platform games, the instructions are fairly simple: direction keys for movement, ‘a’ for attack, ’s’ for jumping, and an addition unlike other games is the ‘d’ button which lets you use a mask which decreases the damage inflicted on poor Clubby.

Once you know the basics, it is time for some smashing revenge to be done! You have 5 fishes which means that you can be only hit 5 times before you die. You also have 4 lives which may seem pretty generous but the lives apparently needs more than 4. The eskimobobs which popped up in the screen are usually the regular enemies that appear on the levels and can be tough to newbies due to Clubby’s short-ranged attack but once killed, it will give you a human skin hide clothing which can be sold at the end of every level. Sometimes, the dead enemy can give you a fish to restore health and if you hit a human baby, the ice cream can be gotten and it gives you a ranged attack when pressed ‘a’ – a handy tool for bosses. At the end of the level, you meet a boss and some of them can be pretty tough and some are pretty straight-forward. Once the boss is defeated, you will go to a shop mode where you can sell human hide for some cool power-ups to go with to the next level.

The graphics are amazingly cartoonish and cute which gives a whole new meaning of ironic and sarcasm at the same time. The violence are humorous and the ‘Game Over’ screen gives you a laugh a lot. It is a cute and violent game – a pretty interesting mixture since cute is always considered as ‘kid-friendly’.

The cons starts with the music when the real gameplay starts. The music is just some random beats and is really annoying especially the fact that you cannot mute the ‘music’. The sound effects, however, is comical and is a lovely touch to the chaos Clubby created in the Arctic.

The frustration and the horrible game design, however, is just so tremendous that it makes the game almost virtually unplayable. The game has way too much cheap deaths: jumping over a pool. Jumping over a pool should be easy, not hard, and the only reason why it is so hard is because Clubby jumps high but does not move to the right enough to reach to the other side of the pool.

The high death toll for Clubby makes the game almost impossible to play. It is a sad thing though because this game will be an amazing platform game and a rather fun one if not for the cheap deaths. It is worth a try but Clubby will always be dead no matter how hard you are going to try. Poor Clubby, poor Clubby…