When purchasing Supermarket Shriek, I was expecting a budget shopping-themed kart racer. In my mind there was scope therefore for it to be both brilliant and terrible. It was to my great surprise then when I got it and realised, it’s not a racer but a top-down series of obstacle courses.

You have a man and a goat sat in a shopping kart, moving it with their screams. To turn right, make the goat scream; left, the man. To move forward, have them both scream simultaneously. It is an incredibly simple 2-button scheme, yet is consistently confusing because of the top-down perspective.

There are, in the Switch version, 6 streets with 5 stores to visit each of which contain a timed challenge. These challenges are either a standard obstacle course, a shopping list where you must pick up the assigned groceries or a mini-race. Upon completing a level, you are graded up to 3 stars with access to the next street locked behind star collection. You’ll want to be achieving at least 2 stars for each level before moving on if you don’t want progression abruptly halted later on.

I was pleasantly surprised in the early levels by how varied the obstacles were. Each new mechanic or obstacle that was added seemed incredibly clever: barriers or floors that open and close depending on microphones recording your screams, hot and cold areas you must rush through, lasers that need blocking by movable walls. All of these things can be controlled with screams (or blessed silence).

Therein lies the first issue: the incessant, irritating screaming. It is of course non-stop because it’s your only means of locomotion. I can’t tell you honestly if a lot of the other sound design was well done, because I had to keep the volume low. I get that it’s the whole premise the game is based upon, but surely the developers had enough headaches while programming and play-testing that somebody brought up changing the concept while keeping the level design.

Where Supermarket Shriek shines is in its pick-up and play nature. Where levels are 30-45 seconds long, but damn tricky to complete. During these levels, it genuinely tickled the same part of the brain that a platformer like Super Meat Boy does. Try, die, memorise, try again immediately. It is incredibly satisfying to pull off high speed manoeuvres, just dodging chain saws, scraping over fallen bridges and really feeling a master of the controls. A number of levels, I found myself dying 15-20 times, but achieving 3 stars the first time the level was completed, because the speed demanded just to survive is full speed.

However, the wheels fall off when the level design forces you to go slow. The absolute worst offenders are the final two levels. They are turgid, repetitive and way too long. The 3 star time for the final level is 4 minutes: I spent over half an hour just to finish it once; I was not going back. There are multiple areas where you’re forced to wait by slow moving turnstiles, or oven tops that will cook you if you’re too fast. Waiting for these, only to die and have to do it all over again just isn't fun, where dying and redoing multiple fast swerves is.

A word on the co-op since it is advertised as a strong 2-player experience. You can play the whole game with a friend, but don’t. It’s hilarious for all of 5 minutes until you realise you’re still literally going round in circles. You see, in co-op one player controls the man’s screams, the other the goats. What that translates to is a kart where one of you can only turn left, the other only right. The co-ordination required to just complete any of the levels is obscene. Try it, have fun with it, but just play the main game hotseat.

Ultimately for me the question with any difficult game is: is it fun enough to justify the difficulty. Unfortunately, my conclusion here has to be: only in parts. I want more like this though. I truly wish the industry gave more attention to and put more weight behind these smaller, more innovative titles. I find it difficult though to figure out who I’d recommend this particular game for: the aesthetic and what’s under the hood do clash strongly. Gamers who want a challenge may be put off by the aesthetic and sense of humour which is very British and though it looks kid friendly the difficulty would be off-putting to younger players.

I wholeheartedly applaud the thought and effort that went into Supermarket Shriek. However, the execution misses the mark as often as not. By pruning the slower, longer levels you could have a real cult hit here and while I know next to nothing about streamers, surely this type of ‘harder than it looks’ experience would be perfect for them? With the weaker parts still in though, it’s just a little bit too much of a slog a little bit too often.