The Adventures of Captain Smiley

Last year one of the games I seriously considered for my own personal Game of the Year was Twisted Pixels ‘Splosion Man. The game felt a lot like a classic 16-bit era platformer with a hint of Lost Vikings. The games look was perfect for me as well as it’s sound design. During last years PAX Prime Twisted Pixel gave the word a short preview of their next game called Comic Jumper – The Adventures of Captain Smiley. The short trailer didn’t really give the viewer a sense of what the game was going to play like but it did show that their design sense was still there. Comic Jumper is one of the games I was planning on waiting in line for to play during next weeks PAX East (IT’S NEXT WEEK!) and after watching the demo I probably still will. The above video struck me that they were almost trying too hard. Some of the things definitely work for me like the sound design (I laughed out loud when “Brad” showed up). Just hilarious and fits perfectly with the look. Speaking of the look it works well for me too. What I’m having trouble with is the writing seems a bit forced in places. Like the jokes are funny but drag on a tad too long like an SNL sketch. I could just be hungry and grumpy as I write this but I was slightly disappointed by the writing. I am still going to play the game at PAX East and hopefully talk to someone in the booth about it. The game is still on my watch list for the year regardless if the writing was a bit forced.