Eets is a cute little 2D puzzle game developed by Klei Entertainment. It features over a hundred screens, a lovely art style that also happens to run in High Definition, and some okay music. First released for free online in March of last year, and again later on Valve’s Steam network, it has just recently been re-released on Microsoft’s Xbox Live service.

The main character is a creature called Eets, a small, bobbly-shaped white thing that gets scared, happy, or angry depending on what you feed him. You don’t actually control Eets, rather you affect his state of mind by placing certain kinds of food pellets in the environment for him to walk into and eat. There are other things you can do to Eets, such as shoot him with chocolate chips which makes him happy when eaten or angry when hit with. You can also suck him up into the mouth of a blue whale to shoot him across the screen. You have to be careful though, because if Eets is anything but terrified he’ll walk and jump right off whatever ledge he happens to be standing on.

The game takes place across puzzles, each puzzle being on a single screen. The goal is to guide Eets using the various little tools at your disposal to a puzzle piece placed somewhere on the screen. Whales will launch him across platforms, different food pellets will alter his mood, certain marshmallow characters will explode if struck with anything. Each tool - a whale, food pellet, etc. - can be placed wherever you feel is necessary. The trick is to keep Eets from jumping off a ledge into oblivion while guiding him over the ledges and various other obstacles to the puzzle piece. There are Christmas gifts placed throughout that add onto your overall score. The central gameplay element here is manipulating Eets’ emotions. Say you need him to make a big jump from one platform to another and you don’t have any blue whales at your disposal. Just feed him a red pellet or shoot him with choco chips (if you have a little choco chip shooter guy available), he’ll get mad and make that jump. Just make sure you’ve got something placed on the other ledge that’ll calm him down when he gets there, or he’ll continue on and jump off the other side. The more levels you complete, the more items you get to use on Eets, and the deeper the game becomes.

It’s hard for me to justify to you, dear reader, the spending of ten of your hard-earned dollars on this game when it’s already available for free over the Internet. As a puzzle game it’s remarkably competent, chock full of content, lovely visuals, and nice music that you might hum to yourself after you’ve turned the game off. This latest version comes with over 120 new levels, but the regular version online has a community dedicated to building new levels and already sports hundreds for you to try out. I don’t know whether Microsoft is going to support fan-made content for Eets over Xbox Live but they’d be smart if they did. If you’re already a fan of Eets and are in dire need of more puzzles to solve then go for it. If you’ve never played Eets before and are thinking of making the purchase, check it out online first.

Download: Demo First.