First Look: Gears of Fur

One of the Christmas presents we received at iFanzine is an early test build of Cheezia: Gears of Fur. No, it’s not a gory third person shooter with cute animals, but it’s still a walk on the wild side for Finnish developer Attido. They debuted on the App Store last August with Cheezia, a casual puzzler where the player matches falling cheese blocks with color wheels. This time Attido is letting the wheel off its axle, so to speak, for some platforming action that’s sure to remind us of the classics while stirring in some new ideas.

Simply put, Gears of Fur is what would happen if you put Mario in a hamster wheel. This is no ordinary hamster wheel though: thanks to its gear-like teeth, the rodent padding along inside can climb up walls as long as the player keeps a directional button pressed. Judging from the early development build, Gears of Fur plays on this strength by making liberal use of vertical segments and items tucked into high corners. Barely missed jumps that would spell doom for any other hero can be salvaged as long as the ledge is thick enough to gain some traction before the fall. The player character handily rolls right over small bumps in the road that would force some serious hopping out of a wheel-less protagonist.

A wall jump and a dash maneuver round out the mouse’s moveset in the development build, and underlying all this is the usual coin collecting, block breaking and enemy head-bopping you’d expect from an action adventure game focused on trap evasion and not on combat. At three levels our look so far has amounted to a mere sneak peak, so we’ll have to interview the developers and find out more about what the release version will hold! In the meantime, check out Attido’s cheddar-filled Facebook page and Twitter account for the latest.