In Cash Cow DX you play as a cow trying to collect cash. We are so back, as the youths say.
It’s from the same developer as Donut Dodo, which we showered with praise upon release. A genuine triumph, it was a love letter to early ‘80s arcade game with warmth, style and a rare fluidity that made it an absolute joy.
Sorry to spoil things for those who haven’t scrolled down to the score at the bottom just yet, but Pixel Games (solo developer Sebastian Kostka) has worked their magic here once again.
Cash Cow DX sees you zipping around scrolling levels, collecting ‘moooney’ (Pixel Games’ pun, not ours) and trying to avoid gaps, traps and the plethora of enemies that jump and run around the stage. Collect all the cash and you ‘mooove’ (our pun, not Pixel Games) to the next level.
It’s all lovingly presented in a faux ‘80s style. It looks, sounds and presumably smells like how you remember Nintendo’s arcade games looking. Of course, they never did look, sound or smell anything like this. But our memory only has so much RAM, and so we fill in the gaps.
So, what makes Cash Cow DX special? One thing that immediately smacks you in the face is how quick it is. Enemies are speedy, and you really need good resources to avoid them, especially as your arsenal for getting shot of them is limited. You can pick up a pickaxe for some Pac-Man-esque table turning, but it runs out quicker than you want it to. The eponymous Cash Cow himself is also rather nippy. It’s great for dodging baddies, but sometimes you feel like you’re controlling an ice-skating anthropomorphised game of Jenga. Cash Cow is all about this – the tension of being on the verge of control, trying to jump up to a collectable that you probably should approach with a tad more caution, swearing at the TV when you lose a life, and trying again. Udder madness, you could say.
It’s the tight combination of subtle animation and control that makes Cash Cow. It’s amazing how it can feel so full of its own personality with just a few frames of animation and a little change in inertia. That’s where the joy lies here.
Of course, having cool chiptune music, 80s-style digitised speech, and a nice CRT filter option helps, too. It all just feels so cozy and nice. It’s great to play a game that’s just about a cow collecting cash. This isn’t a 100-hour epic that took a team of people five years to make. It’s a cool game with tidy pixel art. It’s lovely, sometimes, to have lower steaks.
It isn’t merely a retro throwback, either. Once you beat all five levels and face off against the piggy boss (he’s a swine), you unlock a few new modes to keep things interesting. There’s a hard mode, which plays around with how the cow controls, and an endless mode.
Slightly souring things are a few negatives. If you’re not into score chasing, ergo essentially replaying a level until you know it like the back of your hand, you may find it a fleeting experience. And while the levels are varied and have playful ideas – including trampolines and swaying boats on water – nothing here is revolutionary. It’s simply a newer and shinier version of something you may have played before. More levels would have been appreciated too. As solid as the base game is, we’re sure some more ideas and fun could have been milked out of it.
Cash Cow DX is the video game equivalent of a modern mechanical watch. The technology is frozen in time, and it doesn’t do half the things that newfangled smartwatches do, but it’s also timeless, feels great to play around with, and still looks the part.
Cash Cow DX is published by Flynn’s Arcade and due 26th September on Switch.