Cyanide & Happiness Freakpocalypse New Game Review

Cyanide & happiness started as a webcomic and later turned into an animated web series and now thanks to a successful Kickstarter campaign it has its own video game too.

Cyanide and happiness Freakpocalypse is a point-and-click adventure inspired by classic Lucas arts games according to the developers, this is the first entry in the freak apocalypse trilogy or trilogy of tragedy. While I’m not a die-hard fan of cyanide & happiness. I have enjoyed their comics every now and then so I was looking forward to seeing how well this series would pull off its video game debut given that.

This is a point-and-click adventure the story plays a major role in Freakpocalypse. Here you play as a high schooler named coop who is hated by just about everyone his classmates his teachers even his grandma because he is so viciously disliked. This leads him into a series of conundrums that prevent him from finishing his school tasks and home chores bullies block his locker. A stingy guy hogs the vending machine and the usual homeless guy practices his contortions skills in front of a retirement home.

Cyanide & Happiness story

Do not you dislike it when that happens meanwhile the story in Freakpocalypse is completely and intentionally ridiculous it’s all about coop trying to get his field trip permission slip signed by his grandma while bullies his grandma’s chores and the police get in his way. The only way coop can get past these obstacles is by finding the right tools for the job need to get in his locker find a pencil to unjam it need to get a book under a desk find a rope and pulley to raise it up.

Cyanide and happiness gameplay

This is traditional point-and-click gameplay made popular on pcs and it works with the Nintendo Switch controllers you move the coupe with the left stick and move the cursor with the right you can also move coupe with the right stick by highlighting where you really want him to go and double-tapping. A sadly there are no options for touch controls while playing portably which is kind of a bummer. As this kind of game would have benefited from it.

There aren’t any other gameplay mechanics besides the point-and-click aspect but the reason why you’d want to play this game. Anyway is for its absurd sense of humor the style of freak apocalypse looks like it was ripped directly out of the web series.

Cyanide game characters

The pre-rendered and in-game animations look great the voice acting is superb and there are even appearances from cyanide and happiness characters ted bear and shark dad most importantly the signature adult humor of the series is here too. It is not for kids it’s not even that the jokes are dirty so to speak, they’re just outrageously random occasionally these jokes will also be hidden in the background from illustrations on chalkboards to severed thumbs in woodshop class.

I enjoyed the background jokes more as I appreciated the subtle nature of them or at least as subtle as a Cyanide & Happiness game would allow while these jokes got a good chuckle out of me every now and then the problem with the humor and cyanide and happiness is that it works best for short forms of media like comic strips and animated videos Freakpocalypse took me about 5 hours to complete.

I was already tired of the humor an hour in the unpredictability of the game soon became predictable and I rolled my eyes more often than I laughed throughout my playthrough it certainly doesn’t help that. The main character coop is an annoying unlikable chat box I see now why some people hate him, granted you’re not really supposed to like any of the characters in cyanide and happiness but it was not fun spending an entire game with coop.

Sometimes I put these in my mouth and pretend it’s a gun normally in point-and-click adventures you hear. The main character’s internal dialogue a ton this is also the case with coop in freak apocalypse except his voice sounds like a prepubescent john Mullaney and he’s not as funny. Chimp chimney chimp chimney Chim-Chim-cherry. I once saw my grandmother taking a leak you that and the script gives him way too much to say you’re able to interact with just about every character item.

Background element meaning coop has something unique to say about almost everything on the one hand I admire the effort put into the writing of each object but on the other, I would have rather had the selection of objects and dialogue be fewer and more meaningful as is coop has something unique to say about every single air vent in the game. I wonder if sam fisher is in there with each character and object you are given the option to examine touch or speak to them if you choose to touch a character or speak to an inanimate object, the coop will make a joke about how they shouldn’t grab a person or can’t talk to a picture.

Happiness jokes

It was funny, the first few times but like most of the other jokes in the game, it overstayed its welcome now you could choose not to touch examine or speak to every object in the game but there were times where I couldn’t figure out what item I needed to progress. So, one option I really felt I had was about to touch examine and speak to every item in the room I was in admittedly some of the confusion was my fault as I found out much later that there was a hint button in the objectives menu of this game Cyanide & happiness, that was quite helpful.

However, there was an instance at the coop’s house where I needed a pen so I went up to his room to grab the one on his desk when I tried to pick it up. He said it was out of ink and he couldn’t use it you know I spent the next fifteen minutes wandering his house to find a pen it turned out that was the pen I was supposed to pick up. The pen he was initially referring to was another pen sticking out of his mug that was right next to the one I needed.

This goes to show how inaccurate the cursor on the switch can be if you’re not on the exact pixel of the object you’re trying to get. Even so, key objects can be extremely difficult to find within the game’s messy spaces. The school being a prime example it’s often just a process of trial and error as key items don’t stick out as well as they should and this can bring the story’s pace to a halt of course.

There are a bunch of other side quests you can complete like getting jake to ask the crystal to the prom or getting a dog to maul a mailman for his stamps. I found some of these side stories to be more challenging than the main ones but unfortunately less rewarding. As you only get costume pieces to add to your wardrobe when you complete them. All they do is change your looks with the exception of one outfit I completed a lot of these side quests in the first half of the game but ultimately found that they just weren’t worth it.