DeathSpank

"I think the game types actually fit together quite well," says Gilbert, when I suggest that the whole thing sounds, initially, like a bit of a conceptual squeeze. "If you think about it, adventure games are all about stories and characters, and RPGs are also about stories and characters too. And both genres are fundamentally about collecting items: in RPGs you get them by killing monsters, and in adventure games you steal them from people's houses. We've spent a lot of time making the game fit. DeathSpank is very non-linear, very open-ended. If you just want to go out there and spend four hours killing monsters, you can do that, and then the narrative stuff is woven in on top."

The demo Gilbert walks me through starts in fairly safe adventure game territory. It's early on in the story, and DeathSpank's lost all his deadly gear. (Granted, it's hard to tell whether this is a pastiche of a hated structural cliché, or just the employment of one.) Our hero needs to get a weapon, which means travelling to an aging local legend, Eubrick the retired - "formerly Eubrick the bitter, formerly Eubrick the undefeated, formerly Eubrick the Bastard of Hollhaven, formerly Sally the stable girl..." - to borrow one of his old swords. As you might have expected, this results in a lot of wayward chat, with plenty of unlikely jokes, and dozens of dialogue options you'll take just to see what happens. The exchange culminates, naturally, in a quest: Eubrick's happy to hand over the sword, but he'll only do it in exchange for a taco. "And not just any taco," smiles Gilbert, getting ahead of himself. "An extra spicy taco. And that's a problem because the taco vender in the next village can't sell extra spicy tacos any more because of a lawsuit." A bumbling, unlikely mini-narrative stretches out before DeathSpank, then, and at least one part of Gilbert's ambitious design looks to be in safe hands.

Watching Gilbert play through some of the more dungeon-crawler moments suggests this other half of the game isn't looking too bad either. During DeathSpank's crunchy cartoon combat it starts to become apparent that, although the plot is cheerily moronic and the characters are drooling hunchbacked ninnies, Hothead's game is rather serious when it comes to its mechanics. Seconds after DeathSpank crests a hill to find a group of wide-eyed trolls capering about, Gilbert pauses the action and a huge inventory screen pops into view, filled with dozens of item slots. Each face button is configurable to any of your weapons (although platforms have yet to be announced, Gilbert was playing using a 360 controller) and there are decent armour options, too.

As the designer skips haphazardly through the game, we get to see a few of the weapons in use, and they all offer a clever mixture of comedic effect and strategic balance. The Deathstomp is a massive axe variant with a cartoon boot on the end, but it's also an excellent area attack option, capable of stunning groups of idiotic Greems or spiders, allowing you to move in and pick off two or three at a time with the Cleave, a nasty blade that's swung in a smooth arc. Arrows that put enemies into a thick-lipped, blubbery sleep bring a touch of stealth to a sequence in which DeathSpank picks his way through a castle courtyard - although Gilbert reminds us that he could just as easily go in there guns blazing - while special attacks, such as the ability to summon chickens, mix risk with reward: your clucking allies will make short work of any monsters, but if you call forth too many, they may well turn on you as well.

Stats rise up from every blow, and the game's sinister surf guitar soundtrack is submerged beneath the click-clack of DeathSpank's armour and the insistent cash register splash of collected loot. The combat seems brutally satisfying, albeit in a very silly way, and the world matches the variety offered by the weapons, with Orque encampments gloomy and brooding under a blood red sky, dark forests where lanky skeletons pick their way through mountains of bones, and the spooky calm of the convent where that nun we'll get to work over hangs out.

Gilbert ends the demo, rather poignantly, in the pirate town of Scurvyville, where DeathSpank can clothe himself in buccaneer motley, and get on a ship to explore the twinkling blue ocean. It's a sign, perhaps, that the designer's trying to find something familiar to calm the fears of his older fans.

He probably shouldn't worry: interesting and ambitious as this blend of genres is, there's something comforting and welcoming about Gilbert's latest already. DeathSpank may be an eternal wanderer, protecting the weak and dealing out misguided justice, but somewhere in amidst the hacking, the slashing and the quick-fire chatting, this feels just like coming home.