Toonstruck

Posted by Cyrus Zatrimailov.
First posted on 24 November 2008. Last updated on 13 December 2009.
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Toonstruck
The game stars actor Christopher Lloyd as Drew.
Toonstruck
What a clam, nice pastoral scenery...
Toonstruck
... and its evil, twisted flipside!
Toonstruck
Who is making a cameo appearance to offer a ride?
Toonstruck
Drew tests out his arcade skills at Cutopia.

The history of adventure games began in 1975 when Will Crowther, programmer and speleologist, wrote Colossal Cave Adventure. The game heralded the arrival of interactive fiction that was the forefather of adventure games. Till this date, the adventure genre had taken on itself to evolve in long strides. Earlier adventure games introduced 2D graphics with an animated cartoonish style. When 3D graphics and live action video came into vogue, some critics complained that these older games were rather dull when compared to the later style of their modern counterparts. Many fans, however, were still loyal to the earlier style that defined the genre.

Toonstruck is an example of adventure games that take on both of these styles of the genre.

The protagonist of Toonstruck is Drew Blank (pun intended!), a dejected animator and creator of The Fluffy Fluffy Bun Bun Show. He is also the creator of Flux Wildly, another cartoon character who is a wise-cracking purple animal that bears a great resemblance to Roger Rabbit from the 1988 film Who Framed Roger Rabbit. However, unlike the film, the story of Toonstruck is more similar to the 1997 Compedia game The Quest for the Unfinished Movie. This is because even though Drew's show has been a great success for the company where he works, in reality Drew despises the show's cutesy characters and prefers his more sarcastic cartoon creation. His boss Sam Schmaltz, who has previously canceled Drew's other show, sets him instead the task of creating a new character for his show. Drew is tired of drawing endless cutesy rabbits, but his frustration means little to Sam. Sam only wants money, and more rabbits mean more money. Feeling fatigued after vain attempts to satisfy his boss' demand, Drew falls asleep at his own study, not knowing what great surprise awaits him...

Suddenly, Drew wakes up from a loud sound. It is morning already, and the television is turned on with an announcement of The Fluffy Fluffy Bun Bun Show. In a freak accident, Drew is mysteriously teleported into his own television cartoon show, where he meets his own cartoon character Flux. Suspending his disbelief, Drew agrees to travel with Flux to see King Hugh, ruler of Cutopia, who tells them of great trouble in Drew's cartoon land. Apparently, Cutopia is not as idyllic as it appears to be. The evil Count Nefarious has created the Malevolator, a horrible UFO like device that can turn the childish and peaceful denizens of Cutopia into the dark, gloomy doppelgangers of themselves. The count's plan is simple: to conquer Cutopia and annex it to Malevolands, where he himself will be the sole ruler. The only way to stop him is to develop the Cutifier, a device that is the opposite of the Malevolator and the only hope of restoring peace in cartoon reality. To accomplish their mission, Drew and Flux will need to travel to Zanydu, the birthplace of Flux where everyone is wacky or insane, and even Malevolands itself, a land of evil and darkness.

Although Toonstruck appears to be a typical old school adventure game, it has elements that distinguish it from the other classics. The game uses a combination of live action video and traditional animation, effectively drawing influence from both styles of the genre: the older cartoonish style that is a representation of Cutopia's animated world, and the newer live action style that is a representation Drew's real world. In fact, the physical reality of Drew's world is mostly confined to Drew himself, who is the only "living" inhabitant of Cutopia. This special effect is the hard work of animators who have painstakingly worked to combine these distinct graphical styles into a single look.

Beyond the distinctive graphics, Toonstuck plays very similarly to other graphical adventure games of its time. The player control Drew's actions using the mouse and click on the screen to interact with the surrounding environment. While the game has a traditional inventory (coyly named The Bottomless Bag), the dialog interface it features is quite unusual: instead of dialog branches from which the player can choose, the player is shown... a cube of ice (original, eh?). As the player clicks on it, new topics appear and the cube begins to melt. When all the dialog topics are finished, the ice turns into water and becomes non-clickable.

The puzzles in Toonstruck are a mixed bag. Some are quite logical, while others are totally absurd. For example, when a character gets a bump on the head, the player is supposed to collect the stars around it and then use them as an inventory item. A few puzzles are just plain weird. For example, to construct the Cutifier, the player must collect 12 other objects to match the 12 objects from the blueprint in the most bizarre ways possible.

The game is a big budget production and boasts an almost iconic cast of Hollywood actors. Drew is played and voiced by Christopher Lloyd (Back to the Future). Flux is voiced by Dan Castellaneta (The Simpsons), Fingers the Cashier is voiced by Dom DeLuise (The Cannonball Run), and Count Nefarious is voiced by Tim Curry (The Rocky Horror Picture Show). Even Ben Stein (Ferris Bueller's Day Off) makes a cameo as the voice of Sam.

Toonstruck has quite a strange and open ending. Without spoiling it, suffice to say that it is unexpected and the kind of ending that opens the way to a sequel.

Indeed, it was rumored that the developer was planning a sequel to realize the original ending of the game. Late in the development, however, the game was cut in half from its original size, when the developer was promised by the publisher that a sequel of the game would be made. Much of the materials that were cut were to be used as source for the sequel. Supposedly, this sequel would be about Drew's new adventure on an island... in the sky. Here, he was intended to go on a symbolic journey through his dreams and phobias in a carnival entourage: an exchange of fire in the Wild West, a meeting with Vincent Van Gogh (Drew's idol), and even a visit to a crazy dentist. At the end, Drew was to open his own power of creativity, as represented by an enormous lighthouse, and use it to defeat Nefarious and... wait, it was to be the surprise from the original. The full game would have come on 4 CDs, instead of the 2 CDs in the current game.

Unfortunately, Toonstruck has never been a huge commercial success as intended by its publisher. Development of the franchise has long been abandoned, and it is unlikely that a sequel to this delightful adventure will ever see the light of day.

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