Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness is the verbose title of a new episodic downloadable game by Hothead Interactive and the creators of the Penny Arcade webcomic.  While there is a small bit of classic adventuring to be done in this outing of the game, the bulk of the title is a simplified send-up of other types of games; mainly turn-based combat in a JRPG style (such as Final Fantasy or Blue Dragon) and in a smaller way the resource-gathering mechanic of World of Warcraft.

The game transports the characters from the comic to the 1920's where Lovecraftian evil lurks in seaside boardwalk carnivals and back-alley sweatshops.  The game is lushly rendered in comic-book style and alternates between dynamically animated comic panels and 3D environments where the camera pans along a predetermined track to follow your movements, similar to the recent Sam & Max series.  After choosing your gender and customizing your character's look from a few mix-and-match outfits, this character is seamlessly rendered into the frames of the cut-scenes, complete with facial expressions.  There is some voice acting, but most of the dialogue is text in comic-strip balloons that pop up from talking heads that appear at the bottom of the screen during interaction segments.

You start off raking leaves at your humble home on Desperation Street when your house is crushed by the footstep of a giant robot which does a Godzilla-like number on the entire neighborhood before tromping off for what can only be more nefarious purposes.  Armed with your trusty rake, used both as a weapon against legions of tiny versions of the giant robot and to smash open crates and barrels along the way which contain elixirs and bandages which you will need, you fight your way down the street to meet up with Gabe and Tycho from the comic.  They run the "Startling Developments" detective agency, which serves as your hub to navigate the four major areas of the world, and collects the information you learn and bonus unlockables you discover along the way.  The rest of the game is played with both of them in your party; Tycho reads constantly, pausing only to throw the book up in the air when he has to spray enemies with his machine gun, and Gabe is a melee brawler who has a mysterious past involving "devils".  You have...well...your rake.

Here's where the game might leave some pure Adventurers out in the cold:  The majority of the gameplay is a series of well-scripted turn-based battles that may seem relentlessly out of control and "twitchy" until you get the hang of the combat.  All sides play at the same time, waiting for timers to power up various abilities.  If a character waits before acting, more timers fill up, allowing more varied and powerful attacks.  The higher attacks involve the aforementioned "twitch" factor; a few simple mini-games if played perfectly will maximize the damage done by the attack.  These include banging the spacebar as fast as possible to fill up a meter and then hitting it again when the line drops through a green zone, or clicking the mouse when the arrow passes through zones on a spinning dial.  Also, to survive, you must learn to block enemy attacks by hitting the spacebar at a precise moment during the attack animation.  The attacker's health bar will flash when you're supposed to do this, but the window is so brief you'll need to learn to recognize what the character is doing based on the attack and remember when the opportune moment to block is.  

If you've never played anything like this, it might all sound very complicated.  Luckily the game introduces elements slowly, and for the most part clearly explains what you have to do.  What's not explained is to watch for the status bar flash which signifies blocking is possible, and the fact that you actually can pause the combat if you have a character open their inventory and fend off any attacks that began before you did so.  Then you have the time to catch your breath and deliberate how to best to deal with the enemies.  Early combat is winnable by just staying engaged and using the items you gather from bashing crates to strengthen your party members, or weaken your enemies, or damage them directly with items such as dynamite and exploding clown noses, or distract them.  As the fights get more difficult, there is often a strategic puzzle involved in figuring out the enemies' weaknesses and strengths versus your attacks.  Even though the combat is the focus of the game, it feels well-planned and rewards persistence and intelligent choices that you make through experience.  Dying is relatively painless since if all your characters fall in battle you revive at full health just out of range of the enemy you were fighting and can immediately try again after a quick run down the street to bash some more crates and replenish your elixirs and healing items.

The other thing that could potentially be a problem for some people is the language.  If the idea that the tiny robots you battle are called "Fruit Fuckers" bothers you, steer well clear.  If you've read Penny Arcade, you know what to expect, and this game contains the same mature humor, blunt language and comic violence the strip is known for.  Often the street remains splashed in blood where you've beaten down hobos, or the walls covered the in whatever more colorful stuff runs through the veins of the evil clowns you battle later.  If you kill an enemy with an advanced attack they may explode in gory fashion with pieces of them all over the place.  Luckily this is all in comic art style and meant to be sardonically gratuitous.  

There is a smidgen of adventuring to be done.  You'll have to play some more twitchy carnival games to collect tokens, and one fetch quest involves finding something a urinologist has not yet peed upon.  Simply talking to Gabe or Tycho will usually point you in the correct direction, and many parts of the world have clickable descriptions which are very well done.  You will navigate some dialogue trees that are really funny, although none change the outcome of the game -- pretty par for the course as adventures go.  

If you're not averse to simple, clever RPG mechanics, and you're up for the bawdy humor of tiny juice machines peeing acid on you, or you're ready for something that clicks back at you, you should certainly check out the free demo which will give you a good enough taste of the mechanics to see if it's something you will enjoy.  I'm curious for episode 2 to see if it continues the JRPG combat mechanics or perhaps changes it up with different gaming conventions to parody. 

On the Mac I did encounter one crash-to-desktop bug that was consistent but avoidable, and the action that caused it was not required to finish the game.  The developers are very friendly and responsive to email inquiries, and this issue should be patched by the time you read this. 

Episode One of Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness is available for direct download at www.rainslick.com for PC, Mac, and Linux, and on the Xbox 360 through Live Arcade for approximately $20.

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