Heads You Lose, Then Get Back Again: FranknJohn

Sadly spawn-protection duties meant I was only able to attend the first day of Rezzed, and thus got to play only a fraction of the delights therein, but I'll try to mention most I did manage to get my filthy little hands on before they all pass out of my stupid brain.

FranknJohn is a sort of merry mash of The Binding Of Isaac, Fez and Kirby, using the twin stick concept to enable the clobbering stuff with his endearingly telescopic head while wandering off in another direction, as well as doing his level best not to tumble off into the vertiginous cube-world depths below. It's early days yet, but Irish devs bitSmith Games told me that one thing they're hoping to do is really play with the idea of FranknJohn swapping out his weird science noggin for other heads with different abilities (hence the Kirby comparison).

The randomised levels, the Fez-like distant environments and most especially the freedom to make my head spasm wildly all over the place as I moved sold it to me, though the build I played was really just the move'n'batter rudiments. Have a look at that below:

As the name might suggest, you play as a sort of Frankenstein's Monster character gone wrong. Or gone right, depending on whose point of view you look at it from. There is co-op, there is procedural generation and there is even choice and consequence, apparently.

That's due in the first chunk of next year, though I rather suspect we'll be seeing a little more of it before then, especially if they get the whole swappable heads thing going. Find out more about what they've got planned over at their indieDB page.