Developer: Mighty Rabbit Studios
Publisher: Mighty Rabbit Studios
Rrp: £4.49 (Humblebundle),
£4.99 (Steam) , $5.99 (Mightyrabbitstuidos.com)
Released: 29th January 2014
Available on Humblebundle, Steam and their own website
Played Using: A Xbox 360 Control Pad
Why include this on a Christmas list you may wonder, well it reminds me of lazy Christmas’s. Y’know after the food is eaten, the wrapping from the presents litters the floor and suddenly everything becomes a bit too much effort. Usually the TV is on some holiday special like Die Hard or something. Maybe that’s just my house….
Saturday Morning RPG is, as you may have guessed from the title, a RPG. In this particular case it takes a approach more akin to a JRPG, as in you play as a single character and go through a fixed story.
The story is told episodically, but not to worry all the episodes were released at the same time, its just formatted to look like its been created in episodes like a 80’s cartoon.
The very moment I started this game I knew the music had a familiar feel to it and after a little bit of research I quickly found out why the game features a soundtrack by Vince Dicola who also did the soundtracks for Transformers: The Animated Movie and Rocky IV (Transformers: The Animated Movie being a childhood favourite of mine… still kinda is).
At the beginning of the game your given a magical notebook which will help you on your quest.
You can add stickers to the front of it that will increase yours or lower your enemies stats. More of these stickers can be found in the world if you explore. Some stickers are more rare than others and the rarer ones tend to be a lot better than the usual sort.
The notebook also allows you to change its cover which adds a further bonus to you.
You’ll also find items in the overworld that get added in your stash, its these items that you use as your… spells, I suppose you can call them.
When you enter combat you are given a small window of time to ‘scratch’ the stickers on your notebook (read wiggle the left analogue stick back and forth a lot), when a sticker is successfully scratched you gain the bonuses attributed to that sticker. After a while doing this really starts to hurt, especially when combined with some of the mini games attached to certain weapons.
The combat itself is turn based and uses what I like to call a ‘reactive’ system. I suppose I should explain what I mean, the reason I call it ‘reactive’ is because when a enemy attacks you can defend by pressing [A] on the control pad. Depending on when you press [A] will dictate how well you defended, there isn’t a indicator of any form so a little bit of guess work is needed.
There is a rather annoying flaw with this title when it comes to using a control pad… everytime you start the game you have to tell the game your using a control pad, even if it shows that you are in the settings.
This game is a love letter to 80’s television and the culture that surrounded it, I’m having trouble thinking of a single 80’s trope that isn’t here.
Its a pretty short experience but its one that I think most will relish, especially those of us who lived through the 80’s. I think that anyone who was born afterward would likely not get the jokes that are key to the humour of this game and therefore miss a lot of what this games about.
I’m off to listen to the Transformers: Animated Movie soundtrack.
If this appeals to you perhaps try;
Evoland
Cthulhu Saves the World
Costume Quest
