Felix The Reaper
A killer puzzle game making all the right moves
PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One
We’re not sure what Felix is meant to be made of exactly, but one thing’s for sure – this pillowy potato sack can’t half cut a rug. Watching the big lug don his headphones and dance across a level to a disco beat is joyous stuff. His movements are absolutely infectious: as his curvaceous body bumps and grinds to a funky bassline, his disembodied head bouncing on his shoulders while he cha-cha-slides into the next square, we begin to feel the rhythm too. This may be a game of grids and logic, but its hard edges are padded with irresistible whimsy.
Most of it comes from its cuddly hero, Felix. He’s the inspired work of designer Mikkel Maltesen, and is in fact an agent of death, travelling through time in a magical elevator to manipulate environments and cause enough accidents to keep the Ministry Of Death happy. Initially, Felix started life as a more traditional design, a realistic-looking skeleton covered in brown skin in line with the famous Lübecker Totentanz frieze depicting the dance of death. “It felt stiff, and a bit too obvious,” Maltesen says. So the team began widening their interpretation of what a Grim Reaper could be. “He has been a small skeleton elf, a forest dead-spirit with antlers and a gold-chain hip-hop dude in a jumpsuit made of human flesh.” Then, Kong Orange’s main historian spotted a depiction of death as an office clerk. The appeal was clear.
“Felix is basically a shy, grey office mouse,” Maltesen says, “but when he’s out in the field reaping, he shows a different side and dances as a self-confident diva.” That’s putting it mildly. Our mission is grim, if humorous: we must transport various objects across a grid to particular squares, Sokoban- style, in order to set up a Mouse Trap-esque contraption and cause a hunter’s death. And whether we have Felix carrying barrels or hitting switches that reanimate skeletal horses to pull carts, he does it all in gloriously campy style. The animations are wonderful: a hip-hop arm wave here, a pirouette or grand jeté there. “We worked with dancers of both genders when developing Felix’s dance moves,” Maltesen says. “It’s been of great advantage that we designed Felix so voluptuous – though I must admit that our animators have often cursed his lack of feet and hands.” But no matter how footloose and fancyfree Felix may be, there’s another mechanical twist to consider here. We’re only able to move in the shadows cast by the level’s scenery, but we can move them at a 90-degree angle and spot the always-shaded squares key to creating a safe path. Well, safe for us, at least. After five levels of ordering moves correctly, and setting up comedy scenarios, the death sequence begins, and our target gets his ironic – and gently funny – comeuppance.
It’s quite the mish-mash of themes, then, even before we discover Felix’s other big motivation for working, dancing and being: Ministry Of Life employee Betty The Maiden, who’s captured his squishy heart from afar. In fact, there’s so much at play here – love, death, dance, shadows, Sokoban – that Felix The Reaper’s kitchen-sink approach runs the risk of feeling a little too much at times. Then again, you try telling that to this exuberant bean bag. And the traditional approach to puzzling does a fine job of acting the skeleton, anyway, propping up Felix The Reaper’s cuddlier creative excesses.
In fact, we may have inadvertently hit upon the point of the whole thing. “When you play Felix, you actually continue the tradition of dancing with death,” Maltesen says. “In a sense, the game itself becomes a memento mori. We’re reminding everyone that we’re all going to die – but we try to do it with a smile. The end might not have to be so sad. Why not dance and have fun?”
“We’re reminding everyone that we’re all going to die – but we try to do it with a smile”