Fancy Pants Adventures

Once, when we were little, our imagination highly surpassed our drawing skills and the crudely drawn stick figures we made could perform superhuman feats in our minds. Fancy Pants Adventures is the game prolongation of that idea and serves a world straight from a child’s mind and into some serious parkour business. The game combines speed, agility, jumping and combat to mix its action within a platformer that’s rather sketchy in both ways of the sense.

Ideally, this is how amazingly fun Fancy Pants Adventures may look.

As expected, the universe is shaped by the hand of unrefined drawings and bright colors. Stick figure characters and simple lines set the tone for the whole and get accompanied by some giddy tunes for the additional childish wonder.  This trip to past or present artistic skills is well made and therefore it will be a driving point of the game. There is some confusion though, as some platforms are hard to distinguish from backgrounds, hindering progress.

But the main obstacle in Fancy Pants is its controls that are less than accurate. In a platform game where precision is often necessary, the slick but swerving movement will often become troublesome. The jumping motion is tough to master and also has a slight delay, which is cumbersome on fast sections. Even the combat mechanic of holding the button for a power attack has issues in execution and that makes combat this way a pain. Reverting to jumping however brings back the first problem.

Upside down runs are standard in Fancy Pants Adventures. Falling as well.

It doesn’t help either that Fancy Pants ‘borrows’ a ton of ideas from its platform peers. It is debatable whether throwbacks to Mario or tunneling and speeding sections from Sonic can be considered as paying homage. But when the several obvious references to Super Meat Boy show up, it’s hard to consider a game of merely a year old is being paid tribute for its nostalgic glory. It’s always a risk to do these commendations and usually they benefit a game, but in this case it makes Fancy Pants lose face from its original first impression.

Still, Fancy Pants also tries to bring the fun with some parkour elements, combined with obstacles such as oil and enemies. Through this use of momentum, players need to swish their way through levels and collect squiggly lines and additional trinkets to make their way to the end. Each level also contains several secret areas and mini-games such as races or snail golf. When it tries to be its own game, it does succeed in creating a simple, entertaining experience; but the main problem of the controls does get in the way, every step of the way. When it works, Fancy Pants is a swift, speedy adventure much like Sonic, where players swoosh through the air and grab collectables in fast succession of hopping to platforms. But the majority of the time, jumping will not allow for this marvel to occur or the stick figure will let go its grip of the ground or will slide off an edge before jumping. And even with all these frustrations, all the story levels and additional levels can be leaped in about 5 hours, making this a very short adventure indeed.

A penguin boss bullfight; now there's something different right there.

Luckily, there is a strong redeeming factor to be found in co-op. While it just multiplies all before mentioned issues with every character added and creates problems of its own, such as screen deaths, there are also fun parts. Fancy Pants is centered on a cooperation that offers both friendly and competitive options. For one, there are several ways to interact and help each other by using a stick figure as a trampoline or kicking the other player to the next platform. Additionally, players also compete amongst themselves to collect the most squiggly lines and those that win gain first dibs on the unlockables at the end of the level. There are also mini-games to be played separately which work best in this multiplayer mode, especially racing.

All-round, Fancy Pants Adventures is a charming game that suffers a lot from being overzealous. And while it’s not a bad game, it trips over its trouser legs far too often to be a decent game. Its slippery control mechanics ruin a lot of the short-lived fun and building more on other franchises than its own makes it a cheap experience. But when it does excel, at least it stays fun enough for some laughs; particularly with friend, but not with more due to additional issues. It might only be tailored to the needs of the most dedicated platform pants, but if each friend puts one leg in, it’s going to be one hell of a three-legged race.

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Daav Valentaten, NoobFeed (@Daavpuke).