Eets is, pretty much pure and simple, a fun piece of gaming. Nearly everything about Eets oozes whimsy. The art, the characters, the levels, the sound, the awards. Everything.

Very reminiscent of the art to come out of the Alien Hominid studio, The Behemoth, Eets himself is a quirky and endearing protagonist. Eets behaves like the Lemmings of old and will walk straight ahead at all times, to his doom, if you let him. His behavior changes according to his mood (angry, happy, scared), which the gamer can alter by placing mood marshmallows on the ground in front of Eets. He’ll devour whatever lies in his path and then assume the emotion that particular object confers. Scared Eets will be too frightened to walk leap off of ledges and will move slowly and silently. Happy Eets will bumble merrily along and hop off and ledges he gets to. Angry Eets storms around the the stage and gives a huge leap off of any ledge.

This is probably the key to the charm of the game. True, the art is vibrant and the characters are all fun and unique creations. But what really got me about Eets is that I felt like I wasn’t in control of a mindless Lemming-esque creature. It helps that there’s only one Eets, but more importantly, as the gamer I’m messing with his emotional state. I didn’t like feeding Eets scared marshmallows and hearing his frightened squeak, but I had to get the job done. He became my little buddy.

Using the basic emotional principles of Eets, the gamer’s goal is to guide him (her?) to a puzzle piece located on each stage. Helping with this task are various other tools such as whales to suck Eets and other objects up and then blow them across the stage, lights that can be flicked on and off by odd little ginseng root cannons, pigs that fire tiny explosive cape-wearing piglets out of their rear end and more. Obstacles include the level itself, an angry robot who will attempt to eject Eets from any level once disturbed and, that’s right Penny Arcade fans, the Merch. The Merch is the Penny Arcade personification of the evils of merchandising, and he lives and breaths for a few levels in this game in a geek-pleasing tie-in. The need to collect merchandise items scattered across Merch levels to keep him happy adds a fun gameplay element as well.

Eets is a puzzle game, so the puzzles bear some discussion. Every “land� or series of levels in the game introduces a few new gameplay elements to the puzzling. This keeps things fresh (some may say too complicated). At the same time, each level is only a screen wide. The action can be zoomed out a bit to make the level larger, but things are always fairly limited in scope. This is mitigated a bit by a fair amount of puzzling related to precise timing of actions. Thankfully, levels can be played at three speed settings ranging from super-slow-mo to super-fast-forward. Also, aiding in both timing specific actions and level completion, are the somewhat loose physics employed by the game. Everything, including Eets, bounces around in a fairly unrealistic manner when smacked or blown up, so it’s very possible to fudge one’s way through a number of levels.

All in all, while the levels are fun, they aren’t particularly challenging except in a few spots. It’s pretty easy to logically deduce the proper steps for each level and for anyone needing an extra boost, the game will provide a single hint per level for where to place one item to finish things up. It’s worth noting though, that the hinted item isn’t necessarily needed for all solutions. Neither are all the pieces the gamer is given to place in the level. In fact, awards are given for using fewer pieces than provided on each level. This is where a good portion of the challenge in the game is derived.

There are a fair number of levels to the main game, but what is to my mind the saving grace of any puzzle game is the ability for users to play custom-created maps and here they can be easily downloaded from the Eets website (about 73 at the time of this writing). Not only do these maps provide potentially limitless gameplay, but they also tend to involve gamers really pushing the puzzling envelope and coming up with some creative level layouts.

Graphics:
The look of Eets is fantastic. It has a wonderful hand-drawn feel to it that is bursting with personality. All the character concepts are unique and clever and more than a few are out and out funny. True, the style bears a remarkable similarity to work from The Behemoth, but the characters themselves are totally unique. Really vibrant stuff.

Sound:
The audio is filled with the same personality as the graphics, thanks to a bevy of fun little sound effects triggered by almost everything the gamer can do in the course of a level. I always played with my sound on.

Gameplay:
Gameplay like this is pretty hard to mess up. The timing sensitive puzzling could have been heinously frustrating had the game not come with its three speed settings. Other than that, placing objects in the level is as simple as point and click.

Concept:
The puzzling conceit here is pretty old school. However, it’s delivered in a fresh way with a lot of flair. There’s little to find at fault with the way this title is carried out.

Value:
The main game went by at a pretty quick pace for me. But puzzling’s a heavy variable, it may take another gamer tons of time to work through. Any way you slice it, though, $20.00 is right in the standard range for pricing, and with the level of quality and custom levels Eets has, it’s a deal.

Fun:
Like I said at the start, everything about Eets breathes whimsy. The game is just fun. It’s light, it’s clever and it knows it. Things never get bogged down and the flexibility of the level solutions keeps things new and relatively frustration-free.

Overall:
I found almost nothing to dislike about Eets. So, if puzzling is your thing, then so is Eets. Pick it up and enjoy.