Fat Head

Overview

Fat Head presents a bizarre, conceptually strange platforming experience that leaves players bewildered and frustrated rather than entertained. The game’s core premise – controlling a character resembling an MSN Messenger emoji who decontaminates toxic waste barrels by jumping on them while dodging "Goonies" – devolves into a confusing mess of disjointed mechanics. Early impressions reveal a fundamentally broken movement system, incoherent design choices, and a complete absence of meaningful context for its surreal elements. While undeniably quirky, this novelty fails to compensate for the overwhelming gameplay deficiencies that define the experience.

Frustrating Mechanics and Broken Movement

The most crippling flaw lies in Fat Head’s movement limitations. Players can only jump between barrels, unable to walk or traverse environments conventionally. This instantly creates clunky, unintuitive navigation where precision platforming feels impossible. Jumping lacks weight or feedback, turning basic actions into aggravating chores. The "decontamination" mechanic itself offers no satisfaction – barrels vanish with minimal visual feedback, reducing objectives to repetitive, unrewarding tasks.

Compounding this is the baffling egg-collection system. Collecting eggs from Goonies enlarges Fat Head’s head, eventually triggering a float mechanic that kills enemies. Yet these systems feel arbitrary, disconnected from the decontamination goal, and unexplained by the game. Death respawns players in a jarring "Head Fixing Chamber," further emphasizing the disjointed design. As one player bluntly notes:

You aren’t able to walk, only jump, and have to jump from cylinder to cylinder emptying them out.

Zero

Meaningless Quirkiness and Technical Shortcomings

Fat Head’s attempts at surrealism backfire spectacularly. The Goonies – described as "happy-but-deadly" entities – lack visual personality or threatening presence, while Fat Head’s emoji-like design feels like an afterthought. This strangeness isn’t charming; it’s confusing and devoid of narrative or thematic purpose. The "floating" mechanic epitomizes this – a bizarre power-up with no clear rules or strategic value that disrupts gameplay flow.

Visually, the game is functional but utterly forgettable. Environments are sparse and repetitive, with barrels and platforms lacking detail or visual variety. Sound design fares worse: effects exist but feel randomly assigned, with no connection to on-screen actions or world-building. As one reviewer observes:

The graphics are nothing to write home about and while the sound effects don’t necessarily fall into the bad category, they have no context within the game.

Moshboy