It's the first episode of the new May feature! Yay! We're looking at Burst Studios's 1996 graphic adventure game Toonstruck, featuring professional Hollywood lanky oddball Christopher Lloyd as put-upon animator Drew Blanc (a pun and an homage wrapped into one - liking this game already), the monotone (and politically dubious) Ben Stein as Drew's boss Sam Schmaltz, and a gaggle of talented voice actors who bring to life the various animated characters Drew befriends and, in many cases, created personally. The game's going for that Cool World/Monkeybone conceit of a creator lost in the comical world he created, and does so with a combination of digitized sprites for the human Drew, traditional animation for his cartoon creations, and a mix of the two for the game's many FMV scenes. I'm sure the fact that Christopher Lloyd also starred in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, a similar juxtaposition of animated "toons" and regular humans, almost certainly did not go unnoticed by the developers of this game. Personally, I like to think of this as Lloyd's penance to the toon world for inventing The Dip.
At any rate, if you wanted a crash course in this game and were too busy to look at screenshots, might I suggest Giant Bomb East's attempts to suss out the game? It's been juuuust long enough since that stream aired that I've forgotten all the puzzle solutions they uncovered, so this should be fun:
Toonstruck! It's Not the One With Nic Cage!
Welcome to Toonstruck! I have no idea who this clown is - he's not the antagonist - but I'm sure I will soon.Here's our hero Drew Blanc, working on his most hated - and unfortunately only profitable - creation, a saccharine rabbit called Fluffy Fluffy Bun Bun. As well as being stressed out by work and life commitments in general - it's the 90s, so this was the style at the time (aw heck, it still is) - he's also called into his unctuous boss's office and told to create a whole new cast of rabbits to prop up Fluffy Fluffy. Within 24 hours.Naturally, he takes this news well, and goes about this new task with as much zip and dash as he can muster. Which is to say, he procrastinates all day and falls asleep at his desk.Whether it's the ominous 4am thunderstorm, inhaling acrylic paint fumes or a mixture of the two, Drew's suddenly teleported into his own cartoon show.He's saved from a sudden zapping by his most favorite creation: a manic, sarcastic force of nature named Flux Wildly. Flux acts as Drew's sidekick throughout the game, flowing closely behind and cutting in with his own quips and barbs, and can also be "used" as an inventory item for several puzzles. So, yeah, he's Max the Rabbit but with a more ambiguous taxonomy and the voice of The Simpsons's Dan Castellaneta.King Hugh here wants us to fix the overly pleasant land of Cutopia (that's "cute-opia", mind) from Mr. Nefarious's "Malevolator", a machine that is currently transforming this wholesome world into one less personable.After the intro, we're turfed out into King Hugh's castle to get our adventurin' legs. Before we can leave, however, we must first consult with the royal engineer. Let's talk about this interface some: the game's from 1996, so a lot of the verb inputs have been streamlined down to a single contextual cursor (what is currently an arrow). Left clicking on an object performs the task associated with the cursor's appearance: movement to a new area is a gloved hand pointing the way, picking objects up is a gloved hand reaching down, etc. You can also right click to get the "examine" feedback.The engineer, Bricabrac, is voiced by Corey Burton: a veteran voice actor for Disney. Most of the game's cast is spread across about six or seven of these ubiquitous voice actors, which handily lends the game an authenticity as some lost animated universe, as well as a talented bunch of actors for Lloyd and Castellaneta to bounce off. I'll point out any noteworthy exceptions, but in general the voice acting's the best part of this game so far (even if certain characters grate a little).The deal with the Malevolator is that it's comprised of these twelve parts, and in order to undo the damage it's causing to this world, we have to create its opposite equal: the Cutifier. That means finding the opposing partners of all these items. Fortunately, that's an easy enough bit of wordplay: (Cloak and) Dagger, (Spots and) Stripes, Heart (and Soul), (Bells and) Whistles, (Spit and) Polish, (Pins and) Needles, (Nuts and) Bolts, Ball (and Chain), Bow (and Arrow?), Salt (and Pepper), Rock (and Roll?). Finding all these items will be the tricky part.Before we leave, Bricabrac also gives us this bottomless bag. I imagine it works on the same principle as that mystical space behind cartoon characters where they draw out all their giant hammers and such. It's nice when an adventure game bothers to acknowledge this convenient contrivance. The King's Footman isn't a particularly friendly chap, and we'll need to get rid of him if we hope to snatch any of these trophies. Not that I'm sure what we might need them for, but you know how it is with adventure games. Anything that isn't nailed down, am I right?The "army-dillos" out front are equally chipper, though this one on the left has a habit of dropping his key whenever you ask him to dance. Say, that might be worth keeping...This relates to a puzzle with the drawers, which do that alternating light puzzle thing of opening and closing in groups. By following this idiom, we unlock a tunnel on the left.This simple puzzle simply involves setting up a pitfall for the Footman, ringing the bell so he charges in over the trapdoor in the above picture while it's open and while the carpet's rolled over it. That grants us access to the trophy room, but the only thing we can take from there for now is the giant red herring. I've played this game for ten minutes, but it already seems subversive and meta enough that I bet we actually find a use for it.Leaving the castle, Cutopia then branches out into these four commercial establishments before continuing down south. It's not the kind of game to shy away from giving you full access to its many screens and puzzles right off the bat. I mean, we do need to find twelve items to continue the story (well, eleven, since Bricabrac solved one of them for us). I should also point out that the game has a convenient fast movement system: simply right-clicking on a screen transition warps you right there. No fast travel map, though, at least as far as I've found.The Irish pub has a half-Irish/half-Scottish piece of cheese shaped like a shamrock, which is a pun that went over my head, and we're politely asked to deal with his mouse problem. Simply a matter of distracting him with the organ (the game gets some dick jokes out of that) while Flux whacks him with the hammeriffic mousetrap. That gets us an old mug (used for a puzzle back in the trophy room)Ah, here we go. The first hint of a Cutifier part. The "opposite" of rock is roll, so if I can get these frog baker brothers back together, I should be able to take the roll I need from them. Ray's current whereabouts are unknown, unfortunately.We found a free voucher for this costume shop, but the shopkeeper isn't nearly as dumb as she sounds. She'll know we're just trying to rip her off if we present the voucher without the King's seal of approval, so for now we're at a stalemate. Still, it's good to know that we're only a puzzle away from a costume. What we might do with a costume is another matter entirely.The slippery octopus that runs this dubious arcade is voiced by none other than the dearly departed Dom DeLuise. We can actually get two prizes here: one for beating him at an arcade game, and the other for hitting the bell (aha!) on the strengthometer. Naturally, the odds are against us for both.This is a ridiculously easy game to win, but for the fact you have to input your controls via the mouse cursor and those buttons along the bottom. By hitting the opponent enough times, you'll eventually kill them, which counts as a win. You can also throw your projectiles past them to hit the target, which eventually lowers a giant spiked ball and also leads to a win. It's still a matter of timing, but I wonder if there's a way to out-cheat the cheating proprietor somehow if I wasn't up to the task.Alas, if Flux exists in this universe, so too must Fluffy Fluffy Bun Bun. I'll spare you all the shrill annoyance of this cartoon lagomorph and instead talk about the dialogue system. The first icon, the ice cube, is what I imagine is a visual metaphor for "breaking the ice". You can get a few uses out of this one, and the ice block melts a little each time, eventually becoming a pile of water that indicates that you've exhausted all your "small talk". The hand is simply how you terminate the conversation. The other icons are specific discussion topics, which here includes King Hugh and Fluffy Fluffy herself. A few new quest objects on this screen: that's the pepper we need to counteract the salt, and the angry squirrel's nuts seem like just the ticket to neutralize the Malevolator's bolts. Naturally, both are just beyond our grasp as of this moment.There's also the promise of Zanydu, the land that Flux calls home. This is where all the "loony" toons live, and where cartoon logic is at its most potent. I'm... not quite ready to go there just yet. I'm not sure we can, even.Finally, let's end on the unambiguously gay scarecrow (sorry, "carecrow") who hovers precariously close to an offensive stereotype. He wants the perfect outfit, which is probably where the costume comes in, and will give us his cloak - aha! - as a return gift. As for the barn, well, if you watched Giant Bomb East's video you know what's in there. For the sake of decorum, I think I'll just bring this short guide to the animated world of Drew's feverish nightmare to a close.
I'm psyched to get past the point where those good New York boys bowed out and start figuring out these puzzles for myself, rather than gliding through them due to half-remembered solutions. Toonstruck is every bit the classic adventure game, but also sits on that cusp of when this type of adventure game was about to be phased out in favor of incredibly hokey "cinematic" "experiences" like the nightmare factory that was 1998's Tender Loving Care, another FMV marvel brought to our attention by Vinny and the Beast Crew. To Toonstruck's benefit, it also means that it belongs to the end of a great era when adventure games had thrown out unnecessarily frustrating elements like a half a screen of different parser inputs or progress-zapping cheap deaths for daring to poke at a vicious-looking creature or a weird hole in the ground. The contextual cursor, the wonderful voice acting and the many subtle quality of life enhancements make it a joy to play, not unlike the modern Indie adventure games that have picked up the slack in the intervening years.
At any rate, I hope to have an "Outro" to this game very soon. I imagine I'll be thinking about its puzzles a lot over the next few days.
