Milo & The Magpies
PC Game Review
Milo and the Magpies is a compact point-and-click that follows a premise familiar to most cat owners. Milo, your pet mog, is trying to come home after a hard day of mooching about, but a gang of magpies are doing their best to stop him. If you have a cat, you already know why the wily corvids go into a shrieking frenzy any time Milo even thinks of moving a paw.
Of course, Milo is no innocent in all of this. He’s a cat, and his instinct is to Destroy All Magpies. Sure enough, the first of nine brief chapters sees him luring one of them onto a fountain with the help of a large pebble, a robotic lawnmower, and a hidden frog.
The animation is 70s/80s-style jerky — think the cut-out characters of Mr Benn or King Rollo — but fits the overall aesthetic. First-time dev and full-time artist, Johan Scherft, has acutely translated Milo’s movements into just a handful of frames: the concave arch of his back while he slinks into hunting position, eyes locked onto his target, the excited flick of his tail just before he pounces.
The only thing missing is the ‘eck-eck-eck-eck-eck-eck’.
Each chapter is in a different location, all hand-painted in beautiful detail by Scherft. The variety is there, too. From the architectural Grand Designs precision of the first garden to the higgledy-piggledy haze of the Artist’s yard; a mess at first glance, it’s a lightly cultivated treasure trove for the local wildlife, with dragonflies and hedgehogs snuffling away.
Scherft embraces his love of nature. The bird-feeding garden feels like a glimpse into his future, with an old man peeking at the gathered flock through a pair of binoculars, while his wife shoos Milo away. A goldfinch is straight onto some spilled sunflower seeds, a collared dove tucks into a slice of bread, and a thrush bludgeons a snail against a post.
Not all the behaviours are so realistic. The chase scene with a pike doesn’t quite match the tension of Get Carter or The Italian Job, but it results in a fantastic sequence where Milo receives an unexpected new bouffant.
Most scenes are a breeze and a pleasure to explore. Join the dots, move on. A couple of puzzles are a little esoteric — unlocking the safe in Chapter 8 springs to mind — and it’d be handy if you could drop a picked-up item before finding where to use it, but the game includes a link to a walkthrough should you become stuck.
If Spring/Summer/Autumnwatch’s unvarnished take on the natural world has you scrambling to hide behind a cushion (oh, those poor skylarks), the final sequence is going to sting. Heroes emerge, though, and just like the disparate neighbours on his street, maybe Milo and those noisy magpies might just become friends one day.
Check out more of Johan Scherft’s art and buy the game on the links below.
