Penny Arcade's On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness releases

Yes, that is the title. Penny Arcade's game has been released, and is now available for sale or demo over on the Greenhouse site. What's perhaps most amazing about this game is that on Tuesday, developers Hothead Games released the thing simultaneously on as many platforms as they could, including PC, OS X, Linux, and even the Xbox Live Arcade. That in itself is almost admirable enough to pick it up on principle alone.

But is it any good? Reviews have been middling, though word on the street says that if you're a fan of the webcomic, you'll probably enjoy the game. Jerry Holkins, writer of both the comic and the game, spoke with our sister site Joystiq about the grueling process of putting it together, and gameplay is basically a mix of old-school RPG, Call of Cthulu, and Sam & Max. Play, in other words, at your own risk.

Or just try the demo. The game itself is only $20, but it's the first of four episodes, all priced that way, so it might be pretty costly by the end. Still, especially if you're a Penny Arcade fan, it's worth a look. And any developer that goes multi-platform including OS X on day one, complete with demos, gets a TUAW salute from us.

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Source: http://www.playgreenhouse.com/game/HOTHG-000001-01/

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Yes, that is the title. Penny Arcade's game has been released, and is now available for sale or demo over on the Greenhouse site. What's...

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dpk

I enjoy the game, but I do wish it had keyboard controls and relied on the mouse less. It can be hard quickly and precisely targeting enemies with a trackpad.

May 23 2008 at 11:30 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Joshua

The game hangs on a plain grey screen whenever I run it. Awesome.

May 22 2008 at 10:10 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Cloud

I'm playing the demo. With a dual-monitor setup, there's a bug: after quitting, osx keeps on detecting the screens. Don't know if it's related with fullscreen playing.

May 22 2008 at 1:18 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

paul

No PS3 version? Boo to that.

May 22 2008 at 1:09 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

2 replies to paul's comment

Dale

*obligatory rival system fanboy comment here*

I'm guessing it's much easier to develop games of this scale for the Xbox 360, being based on more familiar hardware than the Cell.

If it sells, though, I'm sure it'll crop up on PSN too.

May 22 2008 at 1:16 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Poltras

@Dale: it's just that the Torque engine doesn't support PS3. It will soon I believe.

May 22 2008 at 1:42 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Dakk

For mash-up of Sam&Max interactions with Final Fantasy-esque combat ... it just doesn't feel right. Granted, I'm running it on a 1Gen Intel iMac, but the cursor lagged too heavily to feel like I was doing anything but running an emulation of an emulation. This means it felt SLOW.

I really respect and am deeply impressed at the effort, but it is pretty much for "must have it all" the fans.

May 22 2008 at 1:06 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Allometry

I bought the game yesterday and have found it to be worth the price. It's a fun game, which requires absolutely no skill to get into. It's a time waster and a good change of pace if you're starting to burn out on some of the other high end titles like TF2.

I will say this; you've got to be a fan of PA otherwise none of the characters will make sense, or the cliches, or the style of writing, or F.F. taste for ripe fruit.

May 22 2008 at 12:19 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply