IGF finalist Jazzpunk is dated for February on Steam
Press 1 to infiltrate, 2 for adult services, 666 for Satan.
Zany adventure game and IGF finalist Jazzpunk is slated for a PC, Mac and Linux release on 7th February, developer Necrophone Games has announced via Twitter.
The comedic caper is set in an "alternate reality Cold War World plagued with corporate espionage, cybercrime, and sentient martinis." In other words, it looks something like this:
I played about a half hour of Jazzpunk last year at PAX Prime, and came away beaming. On the surface it appears a smidge derivative of Blendo Games' (30 Flights of Loving) work in terms of its abstract aesthetic and classic cartoon sensibilities, but it's genuinely funny enough to stand on its own. In hindsight, I think the only reason I didn't write about it at the time was because it threw out so many gags a minute that it became difficult to remember what my favourite jokes were as there were so many of them. I recall starting to take notes, then quickly abandoning that as I had to stop every few seconds to jot down another observation. My notepad from the time contains such choice scrawls as: "newspaper box files for restraining order", "first-person roll through window for no reason", and "press 1 to infiltrate, 2 for adult services, 666 for Satan." I'm sure it made plenty of sense at the time.
Like 30 Flights of Loving and Gravity Bone before it, Jazzpunk contains few puzzles and no real combat. Instead it's about exploring a world and using a bunch of bizarre tools to interact with the environment. And while it won't have conventional game challenges, it will have (according to Jazzpunk's Steam page):
- Stereographic Polygony Soundeo™, NOW IN COLOURVISON.
- A cast of over 360,000 polygons, working in concert.
- For the first time ever, the human voice captured and preserved in CryoSonic Stasis™, thawed before your very ears during NPC exchanges (voice acting).
- Windows/Mac/Linux/Suppository
- Half a dozen jokes.
- Contains five per cent of recommended daily intake of vitamin C++
- Original soundtrack featuring exotic percussion and homemade analog electronic instruments.
What's not to like?