Super Fancy Pants Adventure is a remaster of a classic flash game by the name of
Fancy Pants from my childhood that was put on Steam in 2017. I had a lot of fond memories of the original, so you could imagine my excitement when I saw it on the store page. Playing it however reminded me of why I liked it so much in the first place, and apart from a few gripes I have with it the core gameplay and aesthetic still holds up wonderfully.
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| Fancy Pants in his iconic full sprint, running to Bathtub Village. Yes, that's actually the name of it. |
The basic premise of the gameplay is of fast, parkour-like movement as you run through hills, valleys, over jumps, loop-de-loops, and so on. When you are running, it just feels liberating, and there's a strange feeling of joy from your character's movements. This game is very good at making you feel like a platforming master, even if you're not (like me). The combat is pretty simple, and really you can approach combat with everything (except ink blobs) in whatever way you want. There's your trusty fountain pen (which doubles as a surfboard on paper surfaces), the traditional jump-on-head tactic, and slides. All of these open up the option to drop-kick stunned foes, which usually kills them and allows you to juggle them or even use them as weapons against other enemies. My only criticism is that as the game progresses, there's an increasing focus on combat, which distracts from the core concept of simple movement. Really, the gameplay itself is solid, but the pacing/focus of it could use a bit of improvement. There's also quite a few collectables, all of which must be obtained from completing challenges hidden behind various platforming challenges around the levels. These all award either a hat or new color/pattern for your pants, and are entirely optional, though are great for improving your platforming abilities under duress.
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| Each of the levels/worlds does at least something different, and are pretty creative, there's really no repetition here. |
Visually,
Super Fancy Pants Adventure is very charming in style and appearance. Everything you see looks like a doodle from a preteen/teenager's notebook. Your character, the titular Fancy Pants, is literally a stick figure with a mohawk and big baggy pants. The enemies look like sketches and doodles, and the final level sees the carefully drawn ink world dissolve into reality, with notebook paper being seen more and more, and the final battle taking place on a kid's desk. The soundtrack, which by itself wasn't too memorable, was unique in that it sounded like a garage band made it. This isn't a comment on the quality of the sound, but that I've never heard a soundtrack like that in a game until now, so it stands as unique to me.
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| One of the few times when the game doesn't seem as innocent as it is. This doesn't look like it will end well... |
Super Fancy Pants Adventure is a damn fun game to play, empowering and challenging in equal measure, with only some misdirected gameplay focus to mar my otherwise glowing opinion. So what else is stopping me from giving this my wholehearted endorsement? Well, the fact is that this game is very short, taking only two hours to beat the main story and do a reasonable amount of the challenges. On top of this the game also is asking for ten dollars, which I think is a bit excessive for the sake of nostalgia, good gameplay, and pretty doodle visuals. I strongly recommend this game, but I equally recommend buying this while it's on sale like I did. As the tagline of the original said (if memory serves), Run Fast, and Run Fancy!
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