#swatpaz

[kingofooo]

BMO special sequence concept art by director/animator David Ferguson

[jerry-hornes-foot]

Waterpark prank is literally the funniest episode of adventure time, all the best jokes, and the addition of the wee lifeguard guys. Every time I look it up I see loads of posts saying it's the worst episode and honestly, not to be that cunt, I really think people don't get it lmfao if I hear anymore bad talk about this I'm going to have to get the duty manager involved

[dicebourbon]

soaked leggings glitch

[everygame]

Loot Rascals (PlayStation 4)

Developed/Published by: Hollow Ponds Released: March 7th, 2017 Completed: 28th May, 2017 Completion: Finished it! Trophies / Achievements: 48%

Spelunky is good, isn’t it? I mean not the controls or anything (although you eventually learn to accept them) but just the whole “rogue-like-like” thing done in a fairly tight design space that’s got just enough leeway to be gleefully emergent anddd hang on now this is really making me want to play it, like literally just run over to my Vita and play it, but that would waste at least half an hour and frankly I don’t have that kind of time. But let’s say my opening point here is: Spelunky is good.

Another nice thing about Spelunky is that the aforementioned “rogue-like-like, tight design space, emergent” concept is proven now so you can stick those at the top of your whiteboard during your brainstorming session and work from there. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, and there are really more options than you’ll be able to play now.

Here are some other things that are really good. No, wait, people. People aren’t things. Unless you’re engaged in some sort of weird role-play… no, uh, completely innocent role-play where you’re pretending you’re a chair and your wife is, I don’t know, a hat (“hang on”—Oliver Sacks). First, there’s Ricky Haggett, who co-founded Loot Rascals and previously worked on excellent things like Frobisher Says! (due a Every Game I’ve Finished article, honestly…) and then there’s (imagine a glorious fanfare here, sorry Ricky) DAVEY SWATPAZ. Swatpaz is a Scottish animator behind some of my favourite online animations ever, that I generally show to non-Scottish people to have them go “uh, what?” instead of “aw whit” like a Scottish person would. You should watch, for example, this, which is just ninteen seconds long and, you know, completely brilliant, but really you should just watch his entire output.

Anyway Ricky and Swatpaz worked together on this, Loot Rascals, which is a rogue-like… hmm I’m gonna be safe here and still stick another like on the end, that uses hexes, a day-night mechanic that changes when you and enemies attack based on each move you make, and upgrades come from dropped cards that you can equip and in some cases combine or do other fun stuff. Oh and some cards give you powers that you can use and then you need to recharge through time passing (but it has to pass through discovery or fighting, you can’t just dance between a couple of spaces.) Most importantly, due to lovely art and ideas, it’s nor merely charming, it feels unique.

I mean, it just doesn’t look like other games, does it? Not even your usual indie games with their precious twee art or whatever. It’s bold and comical and, you know, British? It’s like Bananaman, or Trap Door, and I want more of this exact sort of thing.

So, the game, though. It’s about four levels long, so it’s fairly tight, and although you’ll feel an almighty sinking feeling when you die deep into the game it’s not so awful that you want to chuck your entire PS4 in the bin and cry for a few hours. The random generation doesn’t feel exactly perfect, and I feel like—though can’t completely confirm—that you live or die towards the end on how well you can use your powers over and above cards or movement or positioning. Which is interesting because it leads to some amazing crowd-control hail-marys (trying to distract a group with an exploding decoy, for example) but sometimes you’ll hit things where you just feel screwed. And the design is slightly too tight, or rather slightly mis-aimed when it comes to cards; there are no shopkeepers and combo-cards are just a bit too hard to come by. They decided to instead go with ways to get cards from other players, which doesn’t really work because it seems that (on PS4 at least) you can only get cards off friends, and I just didn’t have any friends playing at the same time as me (although certain friends of mine now have inboxes stuffed with amazing cards I sent back to them). Oh and the day/night mechanic can still lead you to wobbling back and forth on tiles because you’re waiting for the right timing, which is a bit... inelegant, to say the very least.

All of that said, though, I never actively got frustrated with Loot Rascals, and I was able to finish it and felt like I did so because I progressively learned the game and built up my skills, with some fun emergent losses on the way (my favourite being the time I dropped a bomb on a steam vent when trying to shoot a fireball, and blew myself up when I already had pretty much everything I’d need to finish the game.)

Loot Rascals is a slightly messy example of the genre, but it’s also one of the most striking, unique, and worth playing. Get a copy. (And convince your mates to play it too, because you’ll want to get cards sent back…)

Will I ever play it again? I’ve got to be honest and say probably not. Though I do have some trophies I could still grab, so maybe.

Final Thought: There’s actually some super crazy deep hidden stuff in Loot Rascals, too, involving hidden artifacts that I’ve grabbed here and there—but I think you need all four. This tumblr doesn’t exist for me to bang on about how this game or that game didn’t “do well enough” but the fact is that Loot Rascals hasn’t done well enough for these kinds of mysteries to get solved. So when I say “buy it and tell all your mates to, too” you’re not just getting a great game out of it and supporting art, you’re also hopefully helping create a critical mass to solve these mysteries. So come on!

[tigershungry-blog]

“#worldbuilding” - @dick_hogg 

My very good chums at Hollow Ponds have put the very good trailer for their new game Loot Rascals onto the internet. No one else making computer games in the whole wide world quite has the same magical sense of humour as these guys do, you should watch it. 

http://blog.us.playstation.com/2016/05/25/introducing-loot-rascals-coming-to-ps4-early-2017/

[frederator-studios]

It's like being hit with a sweaty waterbed.

If you enjoyed last night's Adventure Time episode from guest filmmaker Dave Ferguson, watch his work on Andy Helms's "SpaceBear" on Cartoon Hangover.

[kingofooo]

Water Park Prank (dir. David Ferguson) premieres Thursday, May 21st at 7:30/6:30c on Cartoon Network

[boldyin]

More Swatpaz magic.