I don’t know about you, but I find that so many games that try to be funny fall short. It’s a hard thing to do! Different people are amused by vastly different stuff, so a developer looking to inject humour into their game is treading on inherently trecherous ground. Racoon Logic has somehow managed not only to traverse such dangers, they’ve slid over them, arms flailing. Revenge of the Savage Planet is an exceptionally funny video game.
This manifests in a lot of little ways, all compounding into this wonderful little slapstick machine. For one, Revenge of the Savage Planet, as a sequel to the lovely Journey to the Savage Planet, has shifted the perspective from first person to third. This allows for a festival of wonderful animation work to take centre stage. Things as simple as the running animation are exaggerated to absurd degrees. You slip and slide over goo with the same energy as a Tom and Jerry cartoon, and you full-on kick innocent fauna with the intensity of a wino stumbling across a football someone’s abandoned in the street.
Then there’s the writing. The game is by no means a narrative-heavy experience, it’s a far stretch away from an RPG or visual novel, but it is dotted with little jokes and gags that don’t overstay their welcome. This, paired with a vibrant collection of planets blooming with alien life that sits somewhere between hilarious and horrifying creates this through-line of passive hilarity. A punchline, if you will. It’s a well-known cliche for a writer to say that a game brought a smile to their face. So, in the spirit of Revenge of the Savage Planet’s own dodging of cheap cliches, I’ll just say it made me giggle. And I was pretty sure I heard similar noises come from other preview stations nearby.
Speaking of the writing, there’s a cathartic core to the heart of the game’s premise that adds this brilliant extra layer to ROTSP’s charm. You, as an employee of a space colonization company, are laid off and made redundant and left stranded on a far-flung planet. There’s a rich chocolate river of thick and constant jabs at corporate greed, which makes a lot of sense when you consider the developer’s formation following the biblical mismanagement of Google Stadia. Leaping off that ship, the team clearly has some experience dealing with such ruthless business moves, and have funneled that (as well as their feelings on the games industry as a whole) into the game in amazing fashion.
All of this stuff only sits well because the game itself is solid. That’s obviously the bread and butter of the whole experience. As a metroidvania, you venture across the planets solving puzzles, fighting off different creatures, and snatching loot. Permanent upgrades allow for further exploration, just like our lord and savior Satoru Okada intended. However, given the tone of the game, these are whimsical and wacky in nature – think electric whips and different varieties of goo. There are lots of additional little gadgets you can quickly access that act as a toolbox of sorts for a great adventure.
I do worry a little about how the open world format could make navigating to old places of interest a bit of a hassle, but with a smartly applied marker system on the in-game map, or a generous automatic POI tracker could solve this handedly. I also didn’t find the game particularly challenging. I don’t think this is a big deal, not all games have to break your balls. But, as a survival game of sorts, there’s a particular breed of gamer who might be looking for something that isn’t here. It’s more of a chill experience, one to laugh through with a friend or two.
All in all, Revenge of the Savage Planet is a joyous game. There are elements I didn’t get to explore in depth, such as base customization and capturing creatures for use at home (to do what, who knows), but nonetheless it’s now a game firmly on my list of anticipated 2025 releases. It should be on yours, too! Grab a friend and a pizza and this game will do the rest.
