Review: Freaky Trip is a quirky, adorable game that might leave you feeling dumb in the end

Going into Freaky Trip, I didn’t quite know what to expect. I thought I’d be doing some basic Where’s Waldo?-esque gameplay and simple puzzles. What I got was a hard-as-nails puzzle platformer that required me to think a lot more.

Gameplay

The story, a major component of the reasoning you have to do the puzzles, is surprisingly not that important. You play as Salcy, a weird creature who has lost his best friend, a chicken. The chicken, apparently known as a cockapoo, keeps getting kidnapped across increasingly difficult situations and Salcy has to rescue her. I have to admit that I only know the actual names due to looking up the Steam page, thus the story is not important to the gameplay.

As for the gameplay itself, that’s where things do get interesting. I went into this game expecting silly puzzles and a little challenge. However, in actuality, the elaborate methods that you have to think of during gameplay are incredibly intricate and difficult during some stages.

When I say “You need to think outside of the box”, I really mean it. There is a very high possibility that some solutions just aren’t going to be obvious enough to even consider.

The good news here is that there are no time limits in Freaky Trip. You can relax, think things through, and try anything that you can think of. There is no shame in looking up a guide on occasion due to that particular solution being something that no normal person would ever think of.

Art and Sound

I can’t talk enough about the visuals of Freaky Trip. They’re amazing. The hand-drawn aesthetic really lends itself to the otherworldly feel. This is a style that I feel would be amazing on the right drugs. But, with the difficulty amped up at some points, you’d never get anywhere.

The music isn’t bad. It isn’t like I turned off the music, but there’s nothing particularly noteworthy. The sound design does its job pretty well, but it’s not going to win any awards for it. If you’re stuck on a puzzle for too long, the music and sounds can occasionally be grating, but it isn’t anything horrible.

Coziness and Cons

This game is designed for cozy gamers. With no time limit on puzzles, and fun visuals, it fits right in with other cute puzzle games out there. Although the difficulty amps up from time to time to weirdly high levels, Freaky Trip is not a difficult game as a whole and is surprisingly relaxing for someone needing some actually hard brain teasers. 

The game offers a hint system, but the hints can be pretty vague and oftentimes unhelpful, especially when you have to do a specific series of events to make a specific thing happen. The hints can leave out the crucial difficult parts and only offer hints on the easier clicks.

When I play a game, especially a puzzle game, I don’t want to leave it feeling stupid. Freaky Trip sometimes makes me feel like I should have noticed this thing that isn’t obvious and then I’m stuck on a puzzle for 20 extra minutes than necessary. When looking up guides for it, there was no way I’d have figured out that particular puzzle in a million years on my own, but the game felt that a hint was unnecessary for it.

I played it on PC, which I think really helped in being able to click around when stuck in a difficult situation, but I feel like the Nintendo Switch version may not offer that as much. I would highly recommend playing with a mouse and keyboard in any case, although the Switch version does offer more content for less money.

Freaky Trip Final Verdict

Despite my qualms with Freaky Trip, I actually do recommend it. It’s a really cute, interesting game that offers a really adorable visual style.

All I recommend is that you don’t let yourself get frustrated when you’re stuck on a puzzle. It’s not on every stage, but when you do get stuck, it snags hard. Just look up a guide for that puzzle and move on.

Freaky Trip is on Steam PC and Nintendo Switch. The PC version is $16.99 but offers no DLC. However, the Nintendo Switch version goes on sale often (it’s $1.99 at the time of writing) and offers 4, albeit small, seasonal (Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter) DLC packs for free.

If you’re looking for more puzzle games that we really liked, check out our reviews for A Little To The Left (and its new Cupboards & Drawers DLC), as well as Hidden Through Time 2: Myths & Magic.