The creators of Penny Arcade may grab the attention of millions of tech-savvy geeks every month, but they do it with a fairly old-fashioned product: comics. Later this year, if production stays on track, Mike Krahulik (Gabe) and Jerry Holkins (Tycho) will expand their media empire into the 21st century with the release of Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness: Episode I, their first computer game.
Readers of the comic may find the game’s direction surprising. Gabe and Tycho are famous for skewering the sacred cows of game culture, and one might assume that a Penny Arcade game would do the same. One would be wrong. "This is not a videogame about making fun of videogames," says Holkins. "There are satirical elements in there, but they’re not really about gaming or the game industry." Precipice of Darkness imagines Gabe and Tycho in an alternate universe, a time and place that has more in common with the turn-of-the-century works of H. P. Lovecraft than Halo 3. Steampunk is so in.
Instead of playing the roles of Gabe and Tycho, in Precipice of Darkness you insert yourself into a Penny Arcade strip. They provide a character editor at the outset for just that purpose. You can be anybody — within the confines of dandy fop trousers and waxed mustaches. "We definitely wanted the player to be able to make their own decisions," says Holkins. "It allows us to tell a better story." That story is as follows: While raking leaves outside your house on a pleasant day, you watch in horror as a giant fruit-juicing robot (known to PA readers as a Fruit Fucker) appears and smashes your property to bits. Rake in hand you set out to seek vigilante homeowner justice.
Hobo Alley, a desolation row of professional drunks and living garbage (literally piles of violent trash). Here your avatar meets Gabe and Tycho, who — having nothing better to do — decide to help you. Gamers will recognize this as a common plot device from ye old-school role-playing games, which have a pronounced influence on Penny Arcade Adventures. "We’re definitely trying to capture a bit of that old-school, 16-bit Super Nintendo RPG thing," producer Joel DeYoung says. Tycho (the blond, lanky, Tommy-gun toting one) isn’t reading a magic spell, however. "Tycho is a learned fellow, so he’s always reading something," says DeYoung.
Tycho’s real-life counterpart, PA writer Jerry Holkins, probably has little time for reading these days. He and artist Mike Krahulik, in a very unusual move, are working on the game themselves. "This isn’t a licensed deal like you typically do with a game," says DeYoung. "Mike, who does all the art for the comic, is doing all the concept art. He has designed the characters and their look, designed the look and feel of all the levels in the game. Jerry has done all the writing, so that includes authoring the cut scenes, writing the overarching story, and writing all the interactive dialog. It’s authentic PA humor."
For a writer accustomed to spinning his yarn in a few short thought bubbles, Holkins has taken to his new assignment with gusto. "In a comic book, there’s only one outcome," says Holkins. "It can go only a single way in those three panels, so a lot of material gets cut. In a videogame, we can use more of the content." It provides a nice vacation away from his (not-so-grueling) 9-to-5. "I still really like writing comics, but [writing for a game] is definitely an interesting challenge. It’s probably necessary for me to take on something that has a bit of scale to it, just to grow."
For Penny Arcade’s other half, making the transition to game work wasn’t as simple. Krahulik draws all of the 2-D illustrations in the game, but when it comes to characters, his creations have to be reconstructed from the ground up by 3-D artists. Is he happy with the way it turned out? "Absolutely," says Krahulik. "The latest stuff I’ve seen looks perfect to me. It looks like my characters in 3-D, which is what I wanted." The comic’s beloved (if obscure) Fruit Fucker robots have made the leap in style. If you don’t know what a Fruit Fucker is, don’t worry. "There are going to be a lot of characters and jokes in there for people who are fans of the comic strip," says Krahulik. "But it was really important to us that people who are not necessarily fans of Penny Arcade be able to play it and enjoy it."
Hobo party attacks! Yes, much like the pixelated role-playing games of yore, action in Penny Arcade Adventures means queuing up for a strategy-off. It’s less complicated than it looks. Over time, steam pushes the pistons along the bottom of the screen, slowly unlocking each character’s attacks. Your avatar slays with an upgradable battle rake, while Gabe gets in close with fisticuffs and Tycho mans the Tommy gun. The battles are really an excuse for physical humor. "We’ve got some really hilarious damage states for the enemies, explosions and blood squirting everywhere," says lead designer Darren Evenson. "The violence is going to be over-the-top."
It’s not all click-and-watch. In order to keep the attention of ADD types, Adventures employs a number of twitchy mini-game events within the battles. You’ll sometimes need to nail the timing of golf swing-style meters or mash the keyboard buttons like a maniac. As seen here, your team can block attacks with a well-timed tap of the space bar (really, though, can anyone block a "juice blast?"). "We’re trying to keep it simple," says Evenson. "While much of the time in these games you’re just waiting, we’re trying to make it more interactive."
Developed by the small, Vancouver-based indie studio Hothead Games, Penny Arcade Adventures follows in the footsteps of the webcomic’s independent attitude. You won’t be able to buy it in stores. Instead, the game will be released (on Windows, Mac, and Linux) in episodic downloads available on the Penny Arcade Web site. "We feel like there’s a group of people who are kind of like us, people who have grown up with gaming," says DeYoung. "We consider ourselves hardcore, but do we really play that many games anymore? We call it casual-hardcore: hardcore expectations and casual time. With episodic, I’m going to spend less money for a shorter experience. If I like it, I’m going to buy the next one."
Hothead hopes that the episodic distribution model will help them perfect the game, allowing the (sure-to-be-loud) Penny Arcade audience to have their say in time for Episode II. "After we ship Episode I, we’ll get feedback on the message boards and make changes before the next one," says DeYoung. Taking a stroll through Pelican Bay, the game’s off-kilter boardwalk level, it doesn’t seem that much of the Penny Arcade formula is missing. There are clowns who flip you the bird while hurling clown shoes at you. They get those shoes from their clown crotches. Who knows what poisons lurk in the crotch of a clown....
