Genital Jousting - Review

 

Recently Devolver Digital had a sale on Steam earlier this month and I decided to go a little wild, to be fair though all of them cost just a few euros each. One of the games I downloaded was Genital Jousting developed by Free Lives. Considering my sense of humor I was shocked that I had not heard of the game. Excitedly, with little to no knowledge of what the game was about I downloaded it. 

I think all of us have looked at a sausage on occasion and thought, 'yep that looks like penis'. Has it ever stopped you eating one? Probably not as you know that it is more than just phallic shaped object, and is in fact a tasty pork product. Playing Genital Jousting I found myself asking could I get past the look and gobble down that sausage with gusto?

Story

I know what you might be thinking, 'I have seen the image above how could this game possibly have a story?'. Well it does, a pretty damn good one. You take control of John, who is made up of a penis, testicles and an anus. He is having a bit of a crisis, he needs a date to go to his school reunion so his peers think he isn't a loser. He is in a dead end job where he takes care of quality control testing vibrators. John decides to try everything to become a better Peen, but will it work out and can he get a date for his school reunion?

Of course the game is filled with innuendos, and does not take itself too seriously. That being said there is a real story, and real lessons to be taken away from that. After the early part of the story you almost don't see John as a peen but a real person just trying to improve his life.

Overall a surprising and top quality story, the narration used to tell John's story is fantastic and the only disappointing part is that there was not more of it. 

Visuals

Free Lives really has a great way of creating unsettling visuals with a minimal colour palette and with simple designs. The picture above it one such example of this but is fairly tame by comparison what you will be faced with throughout the game. It is important to note that peens are both male and female, and birds strangely. The two most intense sections for me were the nightmare sequences where I was attacked and assimilated by growing peens and a groom chasing me with a knife lodged in it's anus. While there are plenty of jokes in the game there is also a horror type element.

Overall the visuals are often quite powerful and not sure I will ever look at a penis again in the same way, even my own.

Music

The music varies depending on what is happening to John, panic or frustration is like an angry orchestra playing, and the serene moments often feature peaceful use of strings.  The soundscape is created by South African based composer and designer Jason Sutherland who not only make up part of Free Lives but also created the music for Broforce and The Metronomicon.

Unfortunately, I was unable to find the music to the game anywhere, this is likely due to the length of the game itself being quite short. Overall the music used suited the game pretty well but is not particularly memorable.

Gameplay 

The gameplay is a little different in Genital Jousting by comparison with most games I have played. There is the basic controls; up, down, left, right but you can also control which end of you moves, the tip or the anus. The tip is generally used for standard moving, where as the anus is used to grab objects like food, or soap to get yourself nice and clean. If you take an apple in your anus you then spit the pips out through your tip, naturally. 

There are a number of game modes including Story, Offline Multiplayer and Off Line Multiplayer. 

The game works fine for the most part until you get stuck on an object or another peen, moving around it/them can be an up hill struggle. In the story mode it is not a big deal but online or offline multiplayer it becomes a bit of a pain and takes away from what by and large is a lot of fun.

Overall the gameplay can be a lot of fun but could certainly benefit from a few performance tweaks. 

Final Thoughts 

So, after a few hours of playing how did I feel? Not bad at all. The story was lot of fun and really felt myself rooting for John. The visuals manage to be simply, funny, exciting and sometimes horrific. The music did not really stand out but with a game like this does it really need to? The gameplay is a lot of fun but sadly a few issues getting stuck on objects and occasional clunky controls takes away from making it all it could be. This one gets a 3 out of 5