On Saturday, I attended one of the many different panel discussions at this year’s Penny Arcade Expo. While I skipped a number of them because I felt they just didn’t hold the type of people I’d want to hear opinions from – a lot of the more marquee industry notables were probably in Germany for the Games Convention – this one perked my interest because it involved the guys behind the upcoming Penny Arcade long-winded title Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness: Episode One. A game I admit I had never cared about personally, but did hold a genuine curiosity toward.
The panel itself was half “this is who we are and this is our game” and half fan service Q&A – clearly my gaming journo devil’s advocate mind was not very welcomed here among the hardest of hardcore Penny Arcade fans.
Understatedly describing themselves as the most indie of all indie developers, the guys at Hothead delivered bits and pieces of welcomed news for the dedicated crowd, while at the same time making it seem like there really wasn’t room for the little guy out there. It’s hard to agree with them after seeing games like N+ garner so much attention at the very same convention.
Regardless, the real meaning of the panel was to let fans in to not only the process of making the game, but also get some answers that they weren’t very willing to give out. Like all modern-day game makers, secrets seemed to be Hothead’s best friend.
What did we learn when all was said and done? Well, not a whole lot that any competent Google user could have found the answers to. Nevertheless, the devs did walk the fans through a small portion of the start of the game and did unveil a few closely regarded secrets that were first revealed at the panel – the facts that uber-nerd rapper MC Frontalot would be contributing an original song and most importantly, that the game would not only be appearing on multiple computer SKUs but also on the hugely popular console service Xbox Live Arcade for the Xbox 360.
Considering the title caters so much to the limited hardcore Penny Arcade audience, the announcement that it would be ported over to XBLA certainly seemed like the smartest thing that Hothead could have done in trying to make sure their creation reached as many gamers as humanly possible.
Speaking of the game, if you’ve yet to really look into it yourself, it can be safely described as a niche-specific point-and-click RPG that takes the humor of an online comic strip and mixes it with the classic battle view of Final Fantasy done in a world of Steampunk meets H.P. Lovecraft. From a purely non-fan skeptical standpoint it’s certainly something that seemed way out of the realm of interest for me or any of today’s average gamer.
The dialogue in the game was pure Penny Arcade and purely juvenile in almost every way – it was slow, crude, and immature. There’s nothing wrong with crude and immature, but there is something wrong when it’s just not done in a smart way, ala recent movies like Superbad and Knocked Up.
But, that’s not to say that the game isn’t worth looking at, especially if a demo is made available. Who knows, it may capture your fancy in ways the comic strip never could. Fans of the series, however, will absolutely love this game. I know this as fact because I was surround by a hundred or so during my hour watching and listening to the presentation – they came off as so dedicated that I actually fear for my life in even attempting to offer up some criticism of the title.
The story and ideas behind the direction of the game are purely original and fantastical. As Hothead said, they didn’t want the game to be about two guys sitting on a couch making fun of videogames. They said the storytellers, Gabe and Tycho, had always had the ideas going into Rain-Slick Precipice in the back of their heads. In fact, Hothead said this videogame platform was the only such delivery method to properly tell the story that the two underground icons wanted to tell.
While the game may very well turn out to be a success in the minds of fans, will it really capture an audience that may not be so keen on what two gaming outsiders have to say about the world? We’ll see and I’ll be one of the first to eagerly see the results. It’s an interesting experiment for the gaming industry – melding a dedicated and relatively small community with the mass market nature of videogames in today’s media landscape. It’s not an easy task for Hothead, but I give them credit for giving it a shot.
My instincts are to say they will fail. But hey, I’ve certainly been wrong before and could definitely be wrong again. That’s the beauty of unpredictability, isn’t it?
