Game Review: Toonstruck

SPOILER ALERT

While every effort has been made to avoid spoilers in this post, anyone who has not played Toonstruck (1996) is hereby advised that this post may contain a few unavoidable spoilers.

Back in the ’90s, point and click adventure games like The Secret of Monkey Island, Grim Fandango and Broken Sword were far more popular than they are today. Nevertheless, they still retain a devoted fan-base who enjoy the pain of walking around the same level for hours or days at a time without making any progress and then falling off their seats with delight when they discover a ‘pickupable’ object they don’t know what they’re supposed to do with.

I count myself as one of them. I guess one of the things I like about them is that they are so heavily story driven. They’re not like first person shooters where you can pretty much ignore the story (though I do love a good first person shooter after a hard day at the office). The game is the story, and you have to engage with what’s going on in order to move the story forward.

So today, I’m going to review an often overlooked gem of the genre: Toonstruck (1996).

The game begins in the ‘real world’, where a successful but despondent cartoon animator by the name of Drew Blanc (I know) has been assigned the task of creating new characters for his immensely successful Fluffy Fluffy Bun Bun Show; a cartoon filled with cute bunny rabbits. Despite the show’s success, he despises those sickly sweet rabbits and is struggling to complete the job he’s been assigned. While he is sitting there, despairing of his life, his eye alights on a picture on the wall of a not remotely cute rabbit: Flux Wildly. Wild, irreverent and sarcastic, The Flux Wildly Show was Drew’s first creation, one that he believed would bring him fame and success but never saw the light of day.

Suddenly, just as morning is breaking, he finds himself sucked into a cartoon world, populated with characters from The Fluffy Fluffy Bun Bun Show and of course, his old pal, Flux Wildly. But this is a world divided. The innocent cartoons of Cutopia, where everything is insufferably cute and child friendly, are being threatened by Count Nefarious, ruler of the Malevolands, where everything is weird, dark and sinister. The evil Count has developed a weapon (the Malevolator) which allows him to transform cute cartoons into ugly and nasty cartoons, thus giving him the ability to conquer Cutopia and turn it into one big Malevoland. To stop that from happening, the King of Cutopia hires Drew and Flux to find the parts to build a counter-weapon (the Cutifier) and so begins your adventure in this surreal and colourful cartoon world.

All in all, the story works well. A lot of critics have accused the dialogue, humour and characters of being dated and unoriginal but I personally feel that they may have missed the point. It strikes me that this game was meant as a homage to a classic ‘Loony Tunes’ style of cartoon which is now little more than a distant memory and which was probably already on its way out by the late ’90s; and if this is the case, it has accomplished it masterfully.

This game boasts a wide cast of diverse characters (many of whom are voiced by surprisingly famous actors including Christopher Lloyd, Ben Stein, Dan Castellaneta and Tim Curry), none of whom feel under cooked in any way– not even the minor characters.

If I have one criticism of the overall story, it is this: that towards the end of the game, the story seems to unravel a little bit, which may be owing to the fact it was originally intended to be a much longer game. For instance, Drew is injected with a chemical to turn him into a cartoon, but this doesn’t really come to anything. The story would have worked just fine without it. It would have also been nice to see him succeed with The Flux Wildly Show (the game ends with him pitching Flux to his boss as a companion for Fluffy Fluffy Bun Bun, only for his boss to talk him down and angrily reject the idea). It’s not enough to spoil the game, but it feels like the loose ends were tied up a bit hastily.

One more thing: I would suggest to anyone considering buying this game for their children (because it’s been rereleased on Steam) that it might not be quite as child friendly as it first appears. There is quite a bit of adult humour which, although reasonably subtle, might not be suitable for children of a certain age. The most blatantly adult scene is one in which a perfectly cute cow (Marge) and a perfectly adorable sheep (Polly) are struck by the Malevolator. When you visit them after this, you find that ‘Mistress’ Marge is now chained to a ‘Wheel O’ Luv’ and ‘Punisher’ Polly (all dressed up in a tight fitting corset) is now whipping the cow. The puzzle which follows consists mainly of trying to find a form of torture which can satiated Mistress Marge’s lust for pain more than Polly’s whip. You might have a hard time explaining this to your child so I recommend playing the game yourself to decide if it’s suitable.

All in all, it’s a great fun game to play. I like it a lot and it’s a shame that it was such a commercial flop. Give it a go. I think you’ll enjoy it.

My rating:🌟🌟🌟🌟

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Sharleen Nelson, Author of The Time Tourists [2]