Oh man, Cyanide & Happiness takes me back. I remember when they started with just some stick figure comics, but soon evolved into a franchise with board games, animated videos, comics, and much more! So when the game dropped in our mailbox, I was over the moon – I totally missed out that this was in the making, but I was happy it got ported to the Switch. Adventure meets Point-&-Click C&H style in Freakpocalypse – and beware, this title is R-Rated.
Freakpocalypse!
When I was living in Belgium for my study, I met Rob Denbleckyer, one of the artists of C&H; he signed one of my C&H comics and drew a questionable figure in my comic. I was a long-time fan of the series, although they could sometimes be a little bit too much. But hey, they want to provoke, just like South Park and other satirical comics and shows out there. C&H usually takes it to the humor-scale darker side, with a bit of nihilism and ethical awareness woven into it. The game, dubbed Freakpocalypse, is just like that – making questionable decisions all along the way.
Point and Click-venture
Be wary though, Freakpocalypse is supposed to become a trilogy of games, so I was pretty surprised to see the closing credits roll just as I thought Freakpocalypse’s story had finally moved up to the big ranks. As the current stand-alone game it is, it feels unfinished, so I hope they hurry up and finish the other two parts because it ended on a very.. abrupt cliffhanger. But let’s not run to a conclusion and go through Freakpocalype step by step (or click, by click).
For the vast majority of its brisk four-hour runtime, Freakpocalypse’s plot centers around social outcast Cooper ‘Coop’ McCarthy and his quest to avoid bullies, woo his crush, and perform odd jobs for his grandma, whose raging libido is hopefully not very relatable. To top it all off, Freakpocalypse is filled with nudge-nudge winks, winks, and puns. A lot of puns. I probably missed a whole lot, but I had fun reading through the weird dialogue options the game offered. It’s also endearing that desperately asking a character to be Coop’s prom date is an option in just about every dialogue tree.
Dad jokes & Adventure Time!
It could be that Cyanide & Happiness’s humor is on the dad joke level, that I appreciate it more and more. In the school, a kid is getting a drink in the hallway being named ‘Walter Fountain’ or another in the locker room showers named ‘Hayden Shoulders’ — or it’s just toilet stall graffiti-style smut. When Coop eventually leaves the school and heads to Rod’s Pizzeria, there’s a jar on the counter labeled ‘Just the Tip’… and if that’s too subtle for you, there’s also a picture on the wall of a towering sausage with two vegetables at its base. Or the option to wear a shirt that spells dood if you walk to the left, and well, you can guess what happens if you walk to the right.
Since it’s a point and click, you will have to click a lot. Most puzzles are not that hard since it’s mostly talking to person x, gather stuffy, bring it to z (etc.). The sidequests puzzles are the most challenging, like the one in which you have to play matchmaker. You start it off by talking to a girl in the bathroom (yep, pervert alert), discover that they sell anchovy chips (which love interest likes) in the cafeteria, look for a quarter, make them barf, prom date secured! (I gave you the tl;dr version, be happy). The most challenging part of the puzzle was finding the quarter since most items are not in .. plain sight. Since Coop is a twelve-year-old-something, Freakpocalypse self-deprecatingly refers to its story and side objectives as ‘chores,’ and sometimes they feel a lot like them.
Complaints
My biggest problem with Freakpocalypse is that it’s short – I already addressed it in my introduction, but once the story is blazing full steam ahead, it’s over. It felt like South Park: The Stick of Truth – worked through the tutorial, finished my first day, and douchebag is on its way- oh, it’s over. The same goes for the control scheme – it works fine on the Nintendo Switch, but it would be done quicker and easier with a mouse (or touchscreen, for that fact). With a Pro Controller or JoyCons, the game feels a little sluggish since you have to pinpoint certain aspects very … precisely. I spent walking around town for 15 minutes looking for an item I thought I saw at some point but couldn’t pick up. When I booted it in handheld, I could pick it up in a flash.
Conclusion
To conclude, Freakpocalypse feels like walking and playing through a Cyanide & Happiness comic, with some extra layers (ha, 3D jokes). Nevertheless, it feels a little empty when you realize the ending is only four hours away. I can’t wait to play the sequels since the concept is very promising and works pretty well on the Nintendo Switch. Aside from my complaints in the paragraph above, it’s the most fun I had for a while with a point-and-click adventure. If you’re a fan of the genre or the series – be sure to check it out.
