Epic Loon

Review

I am one of those people you would call a movie buff. I love watching movies and series, and I have a tendency to collect French movies (especially the ones from the 60’s, 70’s and 90’s).  So, I was totally amazed when I was introduced to Joe, from Epic Loon. This guy has an incredible collection of VHS movies and his bedroom walls are decorated with posters with thousands of VHS tapes. A perfect setup for any movie fan!  Joe shared with me an amazing story that happened to him recently. His beloved VHS player start malfunctioning, and in desperation, he ran to the hardware corner shop to see if he could find any sort of instrument that would help fix his VHS player. There, the Chinese owner told him about this miracle tape cleaner that would make his VHS player work again. What the owner specifically forgot to mention is that the VHS tape cleaner was a prison for four little aliens, and from now on he has to watch his favourite movies with these little buggers moving from one scene to the next. Welcome to Epic Loon!

Epic Loon is a co-op physic platformer game developed by Macrales Studio and published by Ukuza on the 13 July 2018 on the Steam and Xbox One platforms.  You control one of four aliens stuck in four VHS Movies, owned by Joe.

As you launch the game, you’ll be greeted with a funny introduction. From there, you’ll be able to either play solo against three bots, or with three of your friends on your local PC or Xbox One.

There are four movies to choose from; you can either play Jurassik Land, Nosteracula, Grojira – king of the mob or \LIE II. Each of the movies has three acts to complete and can be played on story, speedrun or hardcore mode. You have to beat the story mode to unlock the hardcore, and the difference between the story and the speedrun is that you have a leaderboard in the speedrun mode that shows how fast you managed to clear each of the movies.

Each of the levels represents a scene in the movie; you’ll have to get your cute little alien through a glowing white tear in the image (somewhere on the opposite side of where your extra-terrestrials spawn) as fast as you can in order to win the stage and move on to the next one. Each of the aliens has their own shape and you can easily find which of these aliens you control. The Alien with one eye will be controlled by player while the alien with four eyes by player four. Very cute! At the start of each scene, all the aliens will spawn as a body mass and can jump from left to right.  However, these jumps are very small, and you must transform your cute out-of-space body into some sort of splash (which sticks on the surface), with one arm that sticks up in the air and has an eye at the end of it. The arm will then move from right to left (like a metronome), and as it does so, it will increase the power of the jump. The trick is to press the release button when the arm reaches the angle you desire so that your cute alien can be propelled in that direction.

Be aware that some objects have a red outline on them, which could be broken glass, a light globe or one of many other dangerous items. If your cute alien lands on one of them, he will instantly die. Don’t worry though, as he will die many times over the course of each of level. You can even commit suicide if you want to; actually, doing so may help move some loose objects to a better position, which can be beneficial for your next attempt to reach the glowing tear in the picture - super fun! Also, you can transform your alien back into a body shape while it is in the air, which can be handy if you need him to land on a specific area, but he will not stick onto an object or platform in his body form. So be careful when you transform and untransform your little body mid-air. 

Each of the levels can last for quite a while, but it will all depend on how good your aim is, to be truly honest with you.  In splash form, you can land on moving items, such as a rope or a lamp, which can make your next move rather tricky. It gets even worse when one or two other aliens land on the same object as your little creature; it becomes chaotic, to say the least.

If one of your competitors manages to get his/her alien to the light before you do, the fast forward setup will increase the speed of the tape.  It will also increase the speed of the arm when you are in the splash form, making it harder to find the correct angle. If you die while in a fast-forward phase, you‘ll respawn as a ghost on the next level, and must touch one other alien in order to respawn as your favourite creature from out of space!

The artwork is this game is superb, and the physics are brilliant!  You’ll be treated with a great soundtrack and plenty of humour, too. I must say that I occasionally found it a bit frustrating in some levels, but apart from that I can’t say anything negative about Epic Loon.