Spiny & Chilly is an interesting and wacky platforming exploration game where you are a penguin and hedgehog duo looking for ice.
I’ve played a lot of platformers in my time, but something about this silly game really caught my attention. You play as a penguin with a hedgehog on your head. The goal of the pair is to wander through the game’s world while collecting stolen ice blocks (because some other penguins have stolen all the world’s ice for…reasons). This means that you both move together as if you are one character (it is a single player game).
I got the chance to play Spiny & Chilly at BIG Conference, where the developer was super passionate about what they were creating and the world around these two cute characters. Inspired by collecting-focused games like Banjo-Kazooie and Super Mario 64, you control Chilly the penguin who absolutely needs (and loves) ice. The world that you are traveling around is somewhat large, with maybe too much open space in between different areas, but there are plenty of little puzzles to solve, secrets to find, and lots of ice blocks that need collecting by you both. You can bounce on platforms, go through gravity shifts, and find a variety of items that can help you get further and find more ice. It’s satisfying to climb a tower or get to a specific hard-to-reach ice piece.
At first, there was a bit of a learning curve with the movement and how to overcome some of the more tricky movements across the map, but once you get it, it feels fantastic. The different areas of the world were also interesting – places like haunted harbors and floating islands, just to name a few. As I only saw an early demo, I am excited to see more of the different worlds this unlikely pair is going to need to explore in the full game.
Spiny & Chilly is currently in development, but in the meantime, you can add it to your Steam Wishlist.
About The Author
