At this year’s Gamescom, I had a wonderful time chatting with someone at the Freaked Fleapit booth before I dove into the incredibly amazing demo of said game. This demo isn’t available on Steam just yet since it is really early in development but I’m happy that I get to talk about it regardless!
Freaked Fleapit is essentially what Crypt of the Necrodancer would look like if it also had Waifus and romance options… which sounds odd but it works surprisingly well.
Here, you’re mistakenly thrown into Hell while clinging onto your soul and because it’s fading ever so slowly, it’s now upon you to venture through the different layers of Hell and find a way to not lose yourself and your life, I guess. I honestly didn’t quite get it but it seemed pretty urgent and not like a laughing matter even if the super adorable cast of Demon Waifus were not taking it all that seriously.
On your runs, you are accompanied by a stellar soundtrack that really gets your blood pumping, the most important thing for a rhythm game – and to the beat of the music, you’ll have to hop around and beat up enemies, each with their own unique movement and attack patterns.
Some enemies move only on certain beats whereas others only issue attacks on every other beat, for instance, which is interesting! It adds to the game’s skill ceiling that you have to observe enemy movements and plan around tactically, all the while not losing your combo meter.
While heavily inspired by Necrodancer, Freaked Fleapit stands out from its inspiration due to the amount of panache it has as well as the different other mechanics in there.
Freaked Fleapit has you accompanied by a demon tie named Tylor!
The tie stretches out as you move on, at times wiggling itself around pillars and having you block your own path if you’re not careful. If you’ve played Filament, it’s similar to that. This tie, though, can also be an escape tool that doesn’t break the combo or rhythm and instead can allow you to attack multiple times if used strategically, although I had only managed to pull that off once in the demo and it was very difficult on top of being a fluke.
At the moment, there is also a boons system in place where you get different unique boni that can make or break interesting builds. I’m looking forward to seeing if the game will also add in weapons, akin to Necrodancer, or other systems.
Some of the issues I faced in the demo were that the UI was kind of hard to see and the combo meter and the beat of the music, at times, wasn’t in sync… but then again, I was told that this demo was very new and more of a proof of concept than an actual representation of the full release.
That aside, though, the game has flair!
From the character art, the cast of characters, the story, and ecchi elements to the unique sound effects and enemy designs: Freaked Fleapit looks (and sounds) AMAZING and it’s a ton of fun!
During dialogues, at the moment, you hear little bone rattling sounds instead of the usual RPG “dootdootdoots”, which is a nice little touch but the game is supposed to also get full Japanese voice acting for its vast characters which is gonna add a whole ‘nother level of style to the game.
On Takahashi from Ukiyo Studios (who was representing the devs and publisher who couldn’t make it) also shared some insights about the future of the game. There are many things they still have to polish, work on and change, so the proof of concept demo I played is gonna vary a lot from the actual release.
Frankly, I’m just excited. If you follow and wishlist this on Steam (which you definitely should if you’re a fan of Crypt of the Necrodancer!), you’ll get to see lots of concept art from the devs and a bunch of interesting dev thoughts that are very nice to read, honestly.
I’m absolutely in love with most of the character designs and can’t wait to play more of this. The devs and people working on it, understand the anime fandom a lot and try to serve not too much service while very much serving a lot. They walk that line of “showing” and “not showing” quite well so far and I’m really glad that it’s just ecchi and not full on you-know.
Freaked Fleapit is oozing with drip and it’s amazing to see such a lovely design direction for the character art, the pixel art, and many designs for the UI and stuff. I hope they polish it really quickly because I can’t wait to play it once it’s out!
This post was originally written by Dan Dicere from Indiecator.
If you see this article anywhere else other than Indiecator.org… then this article has been stolen. Please let me know of this via E-Mail. Other than that, feel free to stop by my Twitch streams!
Indiecator 
Leave a comment