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Funtime

Posted on this, the day of our Molyneux,

by

Rob
and filed under

in our entirely accurate databanks

A screenshot from the game Funtime. It is a neon lit maze in space, there's pink spikes, yellow squares and red and yellow barriers as obstacles. A red spaceship is trying to escape.
A screenshot from Funtime. A mazey bit, at that.

Back in glowing arena shooter territory (you know, for a change), I’ve been playing a fair bit of Funtime recently. It’s enjoyable!

If you’re already well acquainted with Geometry Wars RE 2 then the arcade modes will be fairly familiar. You’re plonked in the middle of an arena, glowing things are going to attack you, you shoot them before they kill you. Videogames!

A screenshot from the game Funtime. It's over on the right side of a glowing arena, an enemy sprays colourful particles whilst a bunch of other colourful enemies accumulate ready to give the player a hard time.
Particle spuffing enemies right here.

I’ll be honest, that was all I really wanted from it and it acquits itself well in that department. I’ve easily sunk a few hours into it and been really happy, all told. Would recommend etc…

It’s worth noting that the survival modes (as they’re known) come in three flavours too, each presenting a different sized arena. I found the initial survival mode a bit too cramped and the third choice, “open”, where the game moves to an infinitely scrolling asteroid field, a bit too much. Large, on the other hand, is where I’ve settled.

There are other modes, mind. The main attraction is a colour switching dodge and shoot variation, navigating the arena requires a lot of button pressing to ensure the player is the right colour at the right time and constant movement is a must.

It's Funtime. Still neon stuff, there's some colourful lasers stretching across the screen this time.
Lasers. Every game needs lasers.

Not going to lie, I couldn’t play it. That’s not really a slight on the game, I’m just older and more sore these days and my ability to rapidly button mash is not what it was. I genuinely couldn’t tell you if that aspect of the game is any good, so I won’t! It looked nice, if that’s any consolation.

Dragging the game back into more familiar territory is the waves mode requiring the player to clear one wave of baddies, then another, then another.

There’s a few walls placed within the arena to shuffle things up a bit and I’ve churned through around 20 of the 50 possible stages so far and it does get pretty frantic. I wouldn’t even consider ducking in to this mode until you’ve unlocked the maximum level of firepower, the friendly drone and have a few bombs under your belt unless you’re really good at this sort of thing though.

It's Funtime again, very yellow this time as the player paints a grid yellow, yellow explosions are going off and there's orange bullets which is nearly yellow if anyone asks.
A yellow thing goes boom. In yellow.

I’m not 100% sure but I think some of the later stages may be impossible to complete without either earning the colour switching or having some bombs in your inventory. It’s an odd thing to let you play unequipped but maybe I’m just rubbish and can’t see the way out! Can’t really rule that out with my attention span. I do have a really poor attention span. Did I mention I have a really poor attention span?

The final two modes, “Zones” and “Funtime” require colour switching so I can’t say I’ve been compelled to give them a shot for all the reasons I mentioned earlier. I can’t really do them justice so no point really.

All told, that’s a fairly nice selection of modes to toy around with. Survival and Waves are enough fun that I really don’t mind there being modes I rather literally cannot play.

No idea what mode this one is from as I grabbed the screens from Steam. It's a slightly more spartan grid with a giant 3d cube tumbling around the place.
If your mum asks, I haven’t got your rotating space laser cube.

Oh! There’s also an unlock system where the stuff carries across all modes that I’m not entirely convinced has much benefit in being an unlock system (rather than just handing the player all the abilities from the off). But! I am the person who starts the player off overpowered in virtually every game I make so maybe don’t listen to me. Regardless, it’s not exactly a grind to get everything maxxed out so perhaps it doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things anyway.

A few rounds before you’re a colourful death machine never hurt anyone.

On the whole, I’m enjoying Funtime! I’m playing through the PS4 version, other versions are available.

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The online home of Rob Fearon, disabled videogame maker, games journalist, crap film watcher, gobshite and doodler. Rob’s been around games a very, very long time now and Punching Robots Club is their personal blog featuring whatever nonsense takes their fancy.

Sometimes it’s a sketch, a review, an article about videogames, a pointer to something Rob finds cool. Whatever, really. Expect anything, Rob’s tired of being a brand online and so it’s just stuff and things these days. Nice stuff and things, mind you.