Cyanide & Happiness has been around for quite some time in the form of a web comic and animated series but until now hadn’t been translated into a video game yet. Developers Explosm and Skeleton Crew Studios have now delivered the first video game version of the series in the form of Cyanide & Happiness – Freakpocalypse which is available now on the Nintendo Switch and PC. Is this mature rated title worth checking out for Cyanide fans or was it better off staying away from being made into a game?
I took the Nintendo Switch version out for a spin for this review and the development teams opted to go with a point-and-click style for the gameplay. If you’ve ever played classic games in that genre such as Day of the Tentacle or King’s Quest then you’ll know what to expect here. The game’s story takes place in Netherton and has you playing as Coop McCarthy, a young guy in school who just wants to do right in the world, find a prom date, and avoid bullies who just want to shove him into a locker. As you start off in the game you find that it really isn’t just the bullies who hate Coop but everyone at this school including the teachers. If you were one of those people who just dreaded going to school every day then you’re probably going to relate quite well to Coop.
Now if this is your first exposure to the Cyanide & Happiness universe then don’t be fooled by the cute comic appearance. This isn’t a game for young ones as it’s much closer to something like South Park. There is tons of adult humor and bad language throughout so make sure to play it away from any little ones. I found some of the stuff funny while some other things not so much so depending on your sense of humor the jokes and such may or may not land with you.
The gameplay is as you would expect from a point-and-click as you’ll be navigating every scene and interacting with all kinds of objects and people. If you see something in the scene in this game chances are you can interact with it to get some kind of response. A lot of it isn’t important to what you’re doing in the game though and so after awhile I wasn’t clicking on near as much stuff as I started out doing. The game is also pretty easy in the sense that I never was really stumped on what to do. I personally don’t really enjoy point-and-click games that have me wanting to go look up a guide to figure out a solution to a puzzle but I also enjoy at least a little bit of a challenge. Everything in this game is pretty cut and dry as to what you need to do. Talk to someone, get something that they need, give it to them, proceed. That isn’t exactly how everything goes but that’s kind of the gist of what you are doing a lot of times. There are a ton of people to talk to around town and get these side missions from but a lot of just felt like it was added to make the game longer outside of the main missions.
One thing you may want to do those side missions for though is the unlockable costumes. Across the game you can find these different outfits to dress Coop up in. They can be found in the world as well as given for completing side quests and while they aren’t overly important, dressing Coop up as a nurse can be quite fun. When it comes to runtime it won’t take you long to roll credits as that point hits a few hours in. Doing the side quests and everything will stretch it out a bit but overall this isn’t a very long experience. It’s also described as part one in what is supposed to be a trilogy so I guess we’ll be seeing more of this in the future hopefully with a bit more challenge and diverse set of things to do in the mission structure.
The art style of the game is one of the best things about it as it’s bright, colorful, and looks just like the web comic. The game seemed to run great for me to on the Switch when I was playing it both in portable mode and docked on the TV. On the audio end of things, I didn’t find the music and sound effects to be anything special but the voice acting was solid. Some of the lines did have me rolling my eyes a bit but overall I enjoyed the vocal performances.
Cyanide & Happiness: Freakpocalypse is a solid point-and-click adventure game full of adult humor. Fans of the source material or things like South Park will likely enjoy it the most as this style of humor isn’t for everyone. When the other parts of this story come out I do hope they make it a bit more challenging and come up with more content that doesn’t feel so much like fetch quests as those two things are what bothered me the most about this first iteration. Outside of that I enjoyed my time with Coop and look forward to what comes next.
*Cyanide & Happiness: Freakpocalypse is available now on Nintendo Switch and PC. Reviewed on Nintendo Switch. Review copy provided by the publisher for this review.