By Craig Pearson on January 23rd, 2012 at 1:01 pm.
The endearingly titled Here Comes Launchman is the retro equivalent of a cat rolling about at your feet as it’s purring and looking up at you with it’s big, wet eyes: the trailer makes me want to pick it up and snuggle it.
It has everything: a simple colour palate, chiptunes, improbably surreal level design that only ever existed in the world of 8-bit platformers. Very catlike, indeed. I’d almost suggest it was trying to hard, but that would be mean and I can’t even begin to be negative about it. Instead I’ll be factual and then excited: it’s a physics-based platformer, where you guide the little guy around Puzzle Planet. Time to excitedly gesture towards the video they’ve just released, showing the complicated mouse-flinging you’ll have to achieve to toss the little chappy through those levels. Oh look, there it is there!
It’ll be out this year. I know what I’ll be doing in one of the 343 days left this year.
23/01/2012 at 13:21 salejemaster says:
I DEMAND, that you first say that the game is not out yet so that I can stop reading, this way I was already clicking to play the damn game when read the last line of the article ._____.
23/01/2012 at 18:01 Zach Hinchy says:
Hi! I’m Zach Hinchy, one of the creators of this game. If it’s any consolation to you, a demo (this footage was taken from its most recent build) should be available to the public in the next few weeks!
Keep track of that game page, it’ll have the demo as soon as it’s available.
12/02/2012 at 23:13 Spyke says:
Hey, if you’re still interested in the game, a demo was just released on their site.
23/01/2012 at 13:25 kukouri says:
Surprised no mention of VVVVVV, reminds me of a more complex version of it with cleaner graphics. Looks fun.
23/01/2012 at 13:55 Meat Circus says:
Its aesthetic clearly owes more than a little to VVVVVV which is BLOODY MARVELLOUS.
23/01/2012 at 22:17 Zach Hinchy says:
The aesthetic style of the game is monochrome lineart, not Commodore-y pixels, and the games control and play completely differently. It really isn’t anything like VVVVVV, I promise you that. Don’t trust me though, just try the demo when it comes out.
However, we love that game and Terry Cavanagh so any comparison to it is a favorable one in my book!
23/01/2012 at 14:04 BoZo says:
Reminds me about N for some reason…
http://www.addictinggames.com/action-games/ngame.jsp
23/01/2012 at 14:33 Grover says:
Everyone has a right to his/her own opinion. Mine is that the retro platformer fad has gotten out of control and these indie devs should try to make something new for once.
24/01/2012 at 00:31 SkittleDiddler says:
I concur 100%. I thought I was the only person on the planet who was completely tired of the whole retro fad. There’s so much more trash than treasure.
23/01/2012 at 14:59 CaspianRoach says:
How many platformers a year do we really need?
23/01/2012 at 15:01 Brun says:
This. While it’s nice to see indie development doing so well, I worry about them oversaturating the market with platformers. That, and platformers just don’t appeal to me at all.
23/01/2012 at 16:11 Synesthesia says:
is there some sort of mathematical function that makes every thread on the entire internet have some sort of complaint? I am betting you, there will be one in the column they announce a cancer cure.
23/01/2012 at 17:04 Skabooga says:
As many as the market will allow.
27/01/2012 at 17:39 Josh W says:
1-(1-Probability of disapproval)^millions
23/01/2012 at 17:08 Bfox says:
Wow, the visual style of the game really takes me back to my black & white Macintosh SE days
24/01/2012 at 20:47 huw says:
Ooh, this looks rather lovely. The more I watched of that video, the more I wanted to play it. RPS, please alert us when it’s released!