Review
Funi Raccoon Game is hard to describe.
You play a raccoon that steals stuff to furnish their garbage bin.
There's a chaotic nature to the game. It's a hyper remix of what feels like meme pop culture beyond recognition. Things exist because they are funny and not due to some deeper meaning. It's a masterpiece of raccoon comical hijinks, and I am here for it.
Gameplay
You play as a blue 2D raccoon sprite running around a 3D world. Grabbing things to bring back to your home (a garbage bin). You can do most of what you can do in other platformers but the main mechanic you'll be doing a lot to solve puzzles is grabbing objects and throwing them at things.
Objects you've grabbed are carried through doors and on trains that lead to different worlds/levels. A big part of the game is exploration, the discovery of paths through the world, and routing so you can bring back that nice loot you snatched.
Presentational Art
With repeating textures for the sky, environments made of very few polygons, and with low texture density, the vibes are that of PlayStation graphics but on a psychedelic kick. The music and atmospherics might feel random but hold some level of consistency with the overall game aesthetic. In the water level there's a calming voice in the background that eventually starts telling those who don't find the water level calming to leave.
"We just don't want you!" the voice says, clearly irritated.
The game obviously isn't meant to be a representation of reality. Nor should it. It feels like a pure form of what a game is. This purity is something I usually only find in game jam games. Something built around a core idea, made with what's available, and personalized to the individual's humour. Fun and humour being prioritized over anything else.
What would a truly representational game of a raccoon stealing stuff be like? Would it be fun? Would the controls feel clunky? At what point would you diverge from reality to make the concept work? It'd be a completely different game but perhaps somewhere between the two there's something special... or in this case, we find true gold with Funi Raccoon Game.
Final Thoughts
The game has a free demo on Steam. I'm personally considering grabbing a copy to play through but the demo itself is for sure a true representation of what you'll get and on its own is totally worth exploring.
If you decide to pick up the game your progress will continue into the full version too. So that's really nice of the developer to do. :)
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