Blip & Blop: Balls of Steel

Pac-Man is a ball with a mouth; Blip and Blop are balls with arms -- conventional arms of several varieties, in addition to more exotic heavy weaponry such as lasers and flamethrowers. Chekhov's law dictates that the gun in the first act must go off in the third, but these hardened spheres haven't got the patience for that, wading directly into a non-stop carnival of carnage, a shooting frenzy only occasionally interrupted with cut-scene dialogue and nods to what might otherwise be described as the run'n'jump platformer genre -- had they legs to run and jump with. (Wiggle and bounce?)

Of course, a game based on wholesale slaughter is only as wicked as its antagonists, and here developer LOADED Studio has taken an interesting tack, setting up forty sinister derivative versions of much-loved video game protagonists and other paragons of childhood benevolence -- the Smurfs (aka "Snuffs", presumably for copyright reasons), the Care Bears ("Scare Bears"), Pokémon ("Dorkemon"), Snorks, Rayman, Lara Croft, Lemmings (in a bonus stage reminiscent of Lamers), and so forth across 5 levels (and two bonus stages), both as mooks and bosses. And when you and they meet? You'll demonstrate that you've got balls and they've got guts.