Wolfbiter reviews IFComp 2024 - latest: Eikas; wrap-up

today’s theme, courtesy of the rng-gods: two games ft. dicks

ROD MCSCHLONG GETS PUNCHED IN THE DONG by Hubert Janus
Playtime: 15 minutes

The one that’s: the spiritual (and literal?) successor to last year’s DICK MCBUTTS GETS KICKED IN THE NUTS, right down to the visual styling and sound effects. (Perhaps without the most err . . . controversial element of that game?).

I spent a while ruminating on the significance of the lexical shift between games:

Dick (penis) McButts (butt) gets kicked in the nuts (testicles) → Rod (penis) McSchlong (penis) gets punched in dong (penis)

but I got nothing. Possibly I am overthinking the dick jokes.

This game has a lot of the same strengths as Dick McButts, including a lot of callbacks to the same plot beats:

  1. Funny, bonkers writing that builds its own momentum
  2. Vivid attention to the specific details physical reality (i.e., re: difficulties in running on a sushi conveyor belt “to risk the toe of a shoe suddenly scuffing up against the surrounding bartop”)
  3. lovingly crafted absurd scenarios
  1. The visual and audio style is crisp and bold. (A quibble—while undo is implemented and useful, for some reason undo often took me back several screens before where I wanted to be.)

My criticisms were two, one serious and one less:

  1. One thing I enjoyed about Dick McButts was that it was unafraid to go balls to the wall. Also I recently learned that the etymology of “balls to the wall” is unrelated to human biology. balls to the wall - Wiktionary, the free dictionary. This is a shorter, less expansive game than Dick McButts, and certainly it doesn’t drag, but it lacked a certain ambition. Perhaps this is just me grading harder now that Dick McButts explored this territory already, but alas, that is the curse of the sequel—the demanding audience expects game 2 to top game 1.
  2. OK, really, the player character cannot conceive of wearing an athletic cup OVER HIS PANTS??
Front matter
Could better set the table for the game Successfully sets the table for the game Successfully sets the table for the game PLUS

I don’t think I mentioned this last year, but I quite enjoyed the cover art for Dick McButts. It’s kinetic and punchy! It very much gets the point across! Same applies here.

Overall funny and entertaining while it lasted, and doesn’t overstay its welcome. But I’m not sure it has a lot to add to Dick McButts.

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