From the developer Abstractpolygon, Roasty Buds Special Brew is the latest Atari VCS game that I’m going to deep dive into here on the Geek Battle Gaming YouTube channel. The game is a retro indie platformer and the style of the artwork instantly gives me the vibe of Cup Head with the 1930s style aesthetic. Of course, this doesn’t live up to Cup Head either visually or in gameplay. That isn’t to slate Roasty Buds, but clearly this is a very different scale game, and one with different gameplay.
The game is a 2D platformer, and it’s more puzzle based than something like Mario or Sonic. There aren’t enemies on the levels, but there are plenty of hazards and traps like spike pits and guns that shoot fire balls.
The game has nice graphics, although there is vibe that this is a Game Boy Advance game that you’re playing on a big screen. The first sceen that comes up with the credits is pretty unreadable because it feels so low res and that it was designed for reading on a small screen. In the game the graphics are pixel based, but the character designs are similar to that 1930s Cup Head vibe. I do like that stages start in black and white and then become colour. When you complete worlds you see sequences that have hold old film reel at the edges, so clearly this is meant to be some kind of throwback to these old-style cartoons, but I’ll be honest I’m not sure why.
This isn’t to say that the story of a group of coffee beans rescuing other coffee beans from danger has to make sense, as obvious Cup Head and Mario and Sonic make no sense, but I didn’t really get what the story was in this or why you are doing anything.
The characters in the game are coffee beans and you play as one of these who has to find barrels that contain identical clone coffee beans in them. Once you find one, or more, these extra coffee bean characters will follow behind you across the level like how Tails follows Sonic in Sonic games, or how Donkey and Diddy will follow behind whichever one you’re not playing as in Donkey Kong Country games. Much like DKC, if you take a hit, you lose your current coffee bean and continue playing as the next one. I do kinda wish that each of the beans had a different design and were each a different character like in DKC as it would give the game more personality.
Although, this said the end of each level ends with the coffee beans being ground up and poured into a cup of coffee in the end of episode screens. Weirdly this sections are rendered in polygons but on the level of GBA or Sega Saturn level at best. I guess forma developer called Abstractpolygons it should be expected that some polygons would appear at some point.
The game as it is at the time of writing isn’t finished. There are menu options for levels that aren’t available to play yet. There have been updates and new stages since I first got the game so I guess I’m optimistic that more levels will emerge and the game will end up finished. For what it is I completed all the available stages in about 20-30 minutes, and a lot of the levels
I did experience slow down at quite a few points which was surprising to me. When I first played the game I felt it was so laggy it was almost unplayable, but that may have been to do with issues with the Atari VCS controller not being plugged in and some lag form it being used wirelessly. Regardless, it did play better today, but still with noticeable slowdown at times.
There have been updates which add new levels and what is called tournament mode, but I’m not sure what it was that made it a tournament mode. It just seemed to be the same as previous levels that I had already played and didn’t see any sign of an online scoreboard for fastest times. It said at the end that more levels would be added, so once again, I feel this is a case of waiting for the game to be finished.
The game plays well enough. There are slopes you can slide down, ladders to climb, and platforms you can bounce from. It all controls quite well and the characters move fast enough without the need of a run button. You can pick up various power ups which you can activate, and these have various effects like slowing down enemies and short term invincibility. When you get this your character wears a cowboy hat which is fun.
You get ranked at the end of each stage and this is something I’m not as keen on. You can pick up items like coffee cups to score points, and this can improve your rank, but the main thing that seems to affect the score is how many of the roasty buds you manage to rescue and this is my biggest point of contention with the game. As the characters you rescue act in a similar way to in Donkey Kong Country where they also act as hit points, I don’t like the idea that in order to get the best rank you should haveto play the level without taking any damage. To be frank, this game isn’t good enough to push players to aim for a perfect run.
There are some nice lighting effects along the way, and I like how when the fire balls hit the walls it gives a sense of them being scorched and then this fades out.
The levels scroll, but you’ll often find you can walk off the edge of a screen and appear the other side of the screen. This is usually for puzzle based progress and finding secrets as the place you end up when you walk off the edge of a screen isn’t always where you would expect.
I found one area right next to the end of a level where I think the game gives you an unfair death scenario. I had several roasty buds who I had rescued and fell into a pit and one of my guys died. But then I found I couldn’t get myself out of the pits and just had to wait for the invincibility frames of each of my guys to run out and them all to die to restart the stage. You can choose to restart a stage form a pause menu, but still, the game shouldn’t have put a player in an unwinnable scenario like this.
Roasty Buds isn’t finished in terms of stages and content yet, but is a short but fun enough distraction for the Atari VCS. The graphics has some charm and the game plays well. I think I’d prefer if the game had enemies or more characters in it and did something to add a storyline, but it’s a cheap and cheerful buy for Atari VCS users and as far as I can tell it’s currently only on VCS.
What would you rate this game?
You can get loads more Video Game articles in the Gaming section of the site, and don’t forget to check out all our gaming videos on the Geek Battle YouTube Channel and the Geek Battle comedy panel show on the Extreme Improv XStreamed YouTube Channel
