Comic Jumper: The Adventures of Captain Smiley Hands-On

After The Maw and Splosion Man, indie developer Twisted Pixel has been hard at work on its next action platformer, Comic Jumper: The Adventures of Captain Smiley for Xbox Live Arcade. It looks to follow in Splosion Man's footsteps in terms of over-the-top ridiculousness (in a good way), and at the 2010 Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle, they not only announced a release date, but were also showing off the new manga level that they had been talking about since E3. For our previous demo of Comic Jumper, go here.

Who's Making It: Twisted Pixel is the developer behind Comic Jumper, and Microsoft will be publishing it.

What It Looks Like: That depends on what level you're playing in. The black and white manga level that was being shown is a tongue-in-cheek take on shoujo manga, which directly translates into "little girls." The hand-drawn art style is very much what you would expect in this type of manga, full of girls with ponytails, short skirts, and plenty of hearts and bubbles. It's an interesting change of pace to say the least.

What You Do: Captain Smiley also undergoes a bit of a transformation from level to level. In this particular one, he's rockin' the spiky anime hairdo and wielding a sword that is much too large for anyone his size to wield. That doesn't matter, though, because when he's not swinging his massive weapon, he's firing a never-ending stream of hearts and bubbles into girls who are completely boy crazy. In this demo, two girls, NaNa and CoCo, have kidnapped a guy named Brad because he is oh-so-cute, so Captain Smiley is off to rescue him.

How It Plays: This particular level changes up the gameplay as you progress from right to left (just like manga!) There are some side-scrolling portions of the game where you can do your melee attacks and use your weapon of love. As you progress through the Japanese high school, you'll move into areas where the game takes over and it becomes a rail shooter, and you use the analog stick to move the reticle and fire with the right trigger. You still have the freedom to shuffle around the screen, though, and use the left trigger to jump.

The boss at the end is a giant squishy squirrel-teddy-bear hybrid with big dark eyes and six limbs. Its form of attack is to cry, so you're running around dodging huge tear drops. Do we really need to say more?

What They Say: If you liked Splosion Man, you're going to love this one.

What We Say: It definitely looks like Comic Jumper is going the quirky and silly route, because even the premise of the game is just plain goofy. You're playing as a superhero who isn't doing so well in his own comic, so he asks his creators (Twisted Pixel) to help him out a bit. Cameos from the development staff make an appearance when you do special attacks. It probably doesn't get much weirder than that, but then again, we haven't played through the entire game yet.

Look for our review of Comic Jumper: The Adventures of Captain Smiley when it is released on October 6.