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    Flinthook

    Game » consists of 2 releases. Released Apr 18, 2017

    Flinthook is a roguelite, grappling hook platformer from Tribute Games.

    Indie Game of the Week 44: Flinthook

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    Mento

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    Edited By Mento  Moderator
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    We need a better term for these roguelike platformers, since there's enough of them around now - e.g. Rogue Legacy, Spelunky, Risk of Rain, Super House of Dead Ninjas, and now Flinthook - to justify having their own genre tag. I was batting around "Platfortune" or "Platformercurial" before I realized the inventor of "spacewhipper" probably has no business coining new genre nomenclature. Better they work like Diablo loot: just keep adding affixes to them until you've zeroed in sufficiently on the core concept. So in that spirit, I'd like to talk about a little randomized 2D platformer RPG with hook-based traversal named Flinthook.

    Flinthook's one of those consolidated game concepts, where little bits and pieces from disparate sources are combined together to create a distinctive whole. All jokes about distinctive holes aside, though, there's a definite feeling when playing Flinthook that is strongly reminiscent of the cycle of Rogue Legacy and Super House of Dead Ninjas in particular: the way that you are rewarded post-death with any number of permanent boons (or, at the very least, some irreversible progress towards same) to make subsequent runs that much more manageable. Combine this with how you gradually get better at the game just generally in terms of practice with controls, abilities and weapons and experience in knowing how best to defeat certain enemies or move past traps, and you'll quickly find that what was once an insurmountable obstacle is now anything but. It's a slow burn, one filled with failure and hardship (and hard ships, since this game has a pirate theme), but an ultimately rewarding one because of those two channels of incrementally increasing aptitude. If it was just one or the other, it'd probably be too frustrating to cope with.

    This seems to happen to me a lot. Check the map at the top right. I somehow made a straight beeline to the ship's mid-boss fight, missing all the treasure rooms and stores along the way.
    This seems to happen to me a lot. Check the map at the top right. I somehow made a straight beeline to the ship's mid-boss fight, missing all the treasure rooms and stores along the way.

    The world of Flinthook imagines a cosmos filled with alien pirates, treasure hordes, the secretive and possibly extinct space sirens, and a group of spirits who protect an all-important lighthouse at the center of the galaxy. A team of legendary pirates abduct all but one of these lighthouse spirits, causing the lone protector left behind to assume the mantle (or even assume the mantle of the mantle) of a heroic swashbuckling raider to take them all back. The game's loop consists of choosing from one of three randomized ship levels, each of which has a random layout, difficulty level, size, and a set of positive and negative "variants" which include the likes of additional stores, special enemies, more money drops, potential gambling by way of sacrificing max health for additional perks, or the chance to procure a collectible. The three dungeon possibilities are usually balanced in such a way that there's always trade-offs: the ship with more treasure might compensate by having more trap rooms or by being longer, for instance. At the end of each ship is a big chest containing a "ghost gem" and you need a certain number of these to fight the chapter's boss, which is an extraordinarily difficult fight made any amount easier by your luck in obtaining resources from the previous levels. Whether you win or lose against this boss, or die getting to them, you gain experience equivalent to the amount of cash you found, keep any new collectibles and black market tokens (which are spent on permanent upgrades), and everything else resets to the default. Chances are, even if you crashed and burned horribly, you'll have a few extra levels - which unlocks new perks to activate before setting off on an adventure, such as increased health or bonus gold, though you have a limited number you can equip at once - and some new permanent boosts from the black market. Of course, if you actually beat the chapter boss, the rewards are far greater.

    It's the kind of cycle that appears to make for a short game on paper, but doesn't account for how challenging the game can be and how often you're expected to bash your head against a particular boss. Like any roguelike-based model, you only have the one life to lose (there are no instant-death pits or spikes, fortunately) and then it's back to the beginning. At the point I'm at, the second chapter, you need to complete four of those randomized ship dungeons before you're given a shot at the boss, and it can be dispiriting to get three or four ships down before losing all that progress. The fact that you always hold onto something after a failure makes it slightly easier to swallow, but there's a creeping dread that later chapters will demand more and more of these ghost gems before I can tackle a boss fight that I'm unlikely to beat until I've either practiced against it enough times or grinded out some more permanent boosts (or get lucky with the perks found/bought mid-session). It would definitely help if I was better at the game too, but even from where I'm sitting it doesn't seem impossible; just a very long and slow climb to reach that necessary rung of competency.

    A rare win. I think this was after the tutorial though, so it doesn't count. (The scores don't mean anything, unless you're trying to beat your friends in the daily/weekly challenges.)
    A rare win. I think this was after the tutorial though, so it doesn't count. (The scores don't mean anything, unless you're trying to beat your friends in the daily/weekly challenges.)

    In spite of all that, Flinthook is compelling enough to keep you on its cycle, between its mostly precise platforming (the hookshot stuff can feel a little inaccurate at times, due to how it launches you at specific angles), its great music and pixel art (though, again, while the busy levels have a lot of wonderful detail, the cluttered nature makes it easy to miss spikes and other traps hidden amidst the mess sometimes), and its generous apportioning of new abilities and passive boosts. You're given plenty of tools with which to succeed, between a time-slowing belt that recharges quickly and a selection of single-use subweapons, and almost every time when I got hit or died I felt that pang of disappointment in myself for screwing up, which is still mildly better than feeling disappointed in the game for what felt like a cheap and unavoidable death. There are plenty of opportunities to eschew the riskier path, and you only have yourself to blame if you get yourself killed trying to make your way over a trap-filled obstacle course for a chest.

    I'm definitely into what the game's putting out there, but it's also one that I feel will work better in smaller portions. A game to play frequently enough that you don't let your skills and hard-earned knowledge atrophy, but not so often that you start to burn out and grow discouraged from one too many failed raids. Judging your own level of investment in these roguelike types is always a subjective task, though, so your mileage will definitely vary in that regard. Overall, it's a strong recommend if you had the patience for tougher randomized platformers like Spelunky or Rogue Legacy, especially if you wished they were more fluid in their movement and more magnanimous to those who have suffered one too many ignoble deaths.

    We have a wiki page for shoutouts like this, right?
    We have a wiki page for shoutouts like this, right?

    Rating: 4 out of 5.

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    Humanity

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    #1  Edited By Humanity

    This is one of those games I really wanted to like and play but the roguelike form factor made me pass on it entirely.

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    BeachThunder

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    I really dig the visuals of this game, but I really just have no desire to play it (despite loving Spelunky).

    Also, there's this page.

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    deactivated-5b031d0e868a5

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    For whatever reason I always get this game and TumbleSeed confused for one another.

    I still have no idea why I continue to confuse the two.

    I should really check both of those games out sooner rather than later.

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