My Friend Pedro kickflips into stores with a swanky cartoon trailer
Balanced potassium and lead.
Gun-fu platformer My Friend Pedro is out now, letting players stunt off a skateboard while ricocheting bullets off a flying frying pan, all at the behest of a talking banana named Pedro. Unsurprisingly snapped up by Devolver Digital, this has been a slow-burn passion project for solo developer Victor Ågren, operating under the studio name DeadToast Entertainment. Originally a flash-based browser game, it has evolved into an increasingly impressive animated GIF generator that's also a bit like a 2D Max Payne. Below, a short but excellently animated launch trailer.
Ultraviolent but extremely silly, My Friend Pedro strikes me as a game that players won't properly master for a while. Developer DeadToast has been posting animated GIFs of the game to Twitter for years now, and they're always stunning to behold but make me wonder just how much skill is required to pull it off. On top of a graceful pirouette that lets players dodge bullets, players have an interesting bag of tricks, including bullet time, ricocheting shots, firing in two different directions at once and physics-driven melee. I love me some overly technical platform shooting, but I'm expecting some players to bounce off if it's fiddly to control.
My other concern at this point is that the GIFs shown so far suggest an optimal path worked out and fine-tuned by the developer, but not too many outside options that won't look awkward. I'm personally eager to dig into it and see if I can't look just as cool, but that's not to say my enthusiasm is without reservation. Reviews so far have been mostly positive but with some gripes, and while Graham has been bouncing his way through My Friend Pedro, he's not quite done with it yet. Stay tuned if you're patient, though; we should find out Wot He Thunk of it by the weekend.
My Friend Pedro is out now on Steam, Humble and GOG for £13.17/€14.27/$16.99, give or take a penny or two.