Death of the Reprobate

Helping a couple of dudes have butt sex openly in public? It's a thing here. Giving a cow diarrhea and feeding it to children? That's here too. If you're brain is like mine, it's all the things you'd want after looking at a bunch of Renaissance paintings and wondering, "what"? This is the first game from Joe Richardson I've played and it's right up my alley. The concept of taking Renaissance paintings and turning them into an absurd and grotesque narrative point-and-click video game is brilliant and ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hilarious. The humor is mostly Monty Python-esque, and while some of it was admittedly a bit "alright-that's-enough" for me personally, it had me and my wife laughing throughout it. I also liked some of the paintings throughout the game enough to look them up as well as the artist, so there's a slight educational component too if you're interested. I've read some comments about the music being too much and while I get it, I think it adds to the chaotic nature of the game. Th puzzles were pretty good overall and if you have trouble you can always go back to the soothsayer to get guidance. I will definitely be checking out more from Joe. Had a lot of fun with this one.

Have you ever wanted to play a Monty Python game? Well, this is as close as you might get. Ever since Pentiment was released, there appear to be many games set in the Renaissance era. Death of the Reprobate takes political satire of the time and turns it into a slapstick goof fest of violence, sex, and issues from the era. The entire game is made up of "clip art" of early oil paintings from this era. The game's title is from a painting of the same name and is also its plot. We follow a sinner who is the son of a dying royal king and desires to become the heir to the kingdom. His father says he must do 7 great deeds and report back before his death. Just like classic point-and-click adventures, you need to click around and talk to people and look at things. The satire just oozes from every corner of the game all the way to button commands. Your character will do a backflip with the right mouse button. It's a dedicated backflip button. The animations are what sell the humor. While the writing is tight and clever, the goofy cutouts from many historical paintings are superimposed onto backdrops and into silly positions. For example, when you find a shrine to pray at, the camera will pan upwards to something really goofy like two men looking at "porn" at the top of an art gallery and make silly comments about it. The game's visuals are so nice that words fail to capture its goofiness. Every scene you walk into has a musical score playing, usually a classical piece, but there's something off-kilter about it. It's slightly out of tune or key but still sounds fantastic. It keeps things from being too quiet and adds joy to the game. This is an adventure game that doesn't really have puzzles, but there is a lot of backtracking. You need to find 10 birds for one quest to help a hunter spot them. Then there's a surprise twist at the end of the quest, and it's usually left field. There's always something completely nonsensical going on, and the resolution of these quests usually ends up bad or poor to completely insane. This is one of those games that you want to completely explore. Click on everything, try every action, and see what happens. It's just a basket full of treats with silly animations, reactions, and lines of dialogue that will make you chuckle or raise your eyebrows. Each quest involves fetching an item, and obtaining that item unlocks another quest. For instance, you must retrieve the blankets lost in a bet to calm a group of crying babies. In the tavern some con men are playing a rigged game of dice. You need to find a way to win the game, but the solution is simply to call out its nonsensical nature, and the con men will agree. It's pretty funny and goes against the tropes of complicated games in adventure titles that most people would rather not learn. You then need to feed another crying baby, and the task requires crushing up some fruit. To achieve this, you make a cow eat the fruit, which then produces mush in a bucket that you feed to the baby. It's super wild and hilarious, and every single outcome is not what's normally expected. My only frustration occurred at the end of the game. The game features a slow-motion chase sequence that lacks quality. I had to restart this half a dozen times because I didn't know where to go on the last screen, and it caused me to get caught. The game is also incredibly short, running at maybe three hours. While it's short, it's very dense and packed full of great art (or manipulated art) and tons of things to look at and see. I didn't want it to end, but sadly everything comes to an end at some point.