Octodad: Dadliest Catch

Developer: Young Horses | Publisher: Young Horses | Release Date: 2014 | Genre: Action / Adventure / Indie | Website: Official Website | Purchase: Steam

Being a good husband and father is hard enough, but imagine trying to do so while hiding the fact that you are an octopus. This is the dilemma faced by the protagonist of Octodad: Dadliest Catch. The poor guy obviously loves his family, but to uphold the charade, he has to go to ridiculous lengths to hide his true nature. Fortunately, everyone, including his wife and two children, is oblivious, provided he stays in character and doesn’t draw too much attention.

Octodad opens with the wedding of our tentacled hero. The mere act of finding his suit and walking down the aisle is impossible to achieve without random acts of destruction. Octodad has boneless tentacles for limbs, which, coupled with the physics engine, results in plenty of unintentional chaos.

You are given simple objectives such as making coffee, mowing the lawn, or grocery shopping. Still, performing them is not as easy as you might think, thanks to the deliberately unwieldy controls. The first few levels that take place at your wedding, home, and grocery store are enormously entertaining due to the mishaps that occur when attempting to perform mundane tasks. Upon release, the latter half of the game suffered a bit due to the forced stealth section, which was much more frustrating than the previous areas. Thankfully, the developers listened to feedback from players and changed these via a patch to bring them more in line with the earlier levels.

The visuals are cartoonish instead of hyper-realistic, which is to be expected from a game with a giant octopus playing the lead. The various environments are packed with precariously stacked objects and items, which make navigation perilous, to say the least. It’s hard not to laugh as your character flails about trying to grill a burger or gets sucked into the lawnmower when attempting to cut the grass. The slapstick humor provided by the physics engine means that every player will have their own little anecdote to tell about a mishap that befell their character. We noticed some clipping, which is to be expected considering the amount of objects that can be moved around, but the lack of camera controls is annoying.

We started playing Octodad using a keyboard and mouse but quickly switched to a controller, which felt way more intuitive. After flopping about with the mouse controls, the degree of accuracy we were able to achieve with a controller almost felt like cheating, and it definitely made the stealth sections much more bearable. You control your character’s limbs independently, so to move, you have to manipulate his left and right “legs” while the “arm” is used to pick up or throw objects. There is even a co-op mode where two to four players are each given a limb to control, and the results are wacky, to say the least. You can even specify that the limb control is switched around after each objective is completed to keep players on their toes.

The audio is pretty nice, with a catchy theme tune and some good background music. Characters are voiced except for octodad, who simply burbles when speaking. The evil chef who serves as the antagonist sounds a bit stereotypical, but overall, the voice acting is pretty decent. If you play through the game focusing only on the objectives, the experience is pretty short, but you will miss out on many things. Each area is like a little mini physics sandbox where you can see how much mischief your character can get into, and there are tons of gaming references hidden throughout. You can also search for the collectible hidden ties or aim for the wacky Steam achievements. There is even a secret level tucked away somewhere in the game. Add in the level editor with Steam Workshop support and free play mode, where you can try to beat the developer times, and you’ll find that the game has a lot of longevity and replay value. In addition, the game received a free update that added a few new self-contained adventures called “Octodad Shorts.” These new scenarios feature new stories, objectives, and more for players to enjoy.

Overall, we had a lot of fun with Octodad, both in single-player and co-op. The stealth sections in the second half of the game did drag down the experience, so kudos to the developers for adding new objectives and solutions for players to replace them. Add to that the level editor and Steam Workshop support, and you have a game that is easy to recommend.

*Review originally published February 2014.