Quick Review: Toonstruck

Completely loony!

Toonstruck was developed by Burst Studios, first published by Virgin Interactive Entertainment in October 1996, and then re-published to Steam by Interplay Entertainment Corp. on November 15th, 2016. I rarely covered Full Motion Video (FMV) games before, so this could be interesting! Especially since it stars Christopher Lloyd. (The low video quality isn’t great, but it's okay for computers of the time!)

"Drew?" "Flux? ...I gotta lay off the bourbon."

Hey, it's not every day you get to visit a cartoon castle.

The story: Drew Blanc (Lloyd) is a struggling animator so caught up in his job that he forgets to care for himself, while at the same time being behind on assignments. He hopes to see his wacky creation Flux Wildly get a show of his own someday, but for now, he must draw for an unbearably child-friendly show starring bunnies. One night, while he’s behind on the latest project forced upon him by his boss (played by Ben Stein), he falls asleep on his drawing board and dreams that he gets sucked into a nearby television by a UFO-like device. He lands in Cutopia, a world that combines the show he works for and his own creations. Its monarch, King Hugh, would like to help; but first, Drew will have to defend it from the dangerous overlord Count Nefarious, who plans to make everything in that world ugly and dangerous through his Malevolator.

And yes, Lloyd remains in live action throughout. Like in Cool World. Or maybe Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, but reversed. At least, this time around, he’s not talking just… like… this!!!

Every single line of dialogue is voice-acted, by the way.
It's awesome.

We start with one item: Sugar to counter the Count's spice.
What's next? Against the bolts, we need... nuts. Against a
 bow, we need... an arrow. Against a polish, we need...
a spit. It's a very tricky puzzle, especially for those who
aren't native English speakers.

This is a point-and-click; almost everything is done with the mouse (though you can skip dialogues with Space, save with F5, load a game with F6, and turn off the game with alt+F4). Drew and Flux walk around, talk with the varied and bizarre inhabitants of this world, and solve their problems to progress. The plan to restore Cutopia involves creating a machine that counters Nefarious’ Malevolator, which functions with 12 items – thus, we embark on a quest for 12 opposite items. Upon meeting the royal scientist, you receive a blueprint of the Malevolator (to roughly know what to look for) and a bottomless bag to carry anything you’ll find. You can access the bag from the bottom left of the screen. On a few occasions, events during animations still allow you to point and click at items, like when dancing royal guards accidentally drop a key to a locked room in the Castle. Other times, actions can only be done when a character is looking away.

"WACME?" "Sure, if you say so!" *pulls out huge mallet*

Flux travels along Drew for a good part of the game, and the snarky weirdo voiced by Dan Castellaneta can be used to solve puzzles. Click him, then click at something to interact with, and see if something happens. On the topic of roles, we hear several names among the most famous cartoon voice actors of the '90s across this adventure: Jeff Bennett, Corey Burton, Jim Cummings, Tim Curry, Dom DeLuise, Tress MacNeille, David Ogden Stiers, Rob Paulsen, Frank Welker, April Winchell… Now that’s my kind of nostalgia! But don’t mistake this for a child-friendly game; there’s blood here and there, and sooooo many innuendos. All over the place. This game proudly sports its T rating.

Let's see... which of these things could we mix together...
Meat and the poison? Do we need to kill someone?
(The answer is probably yes.)

How many uses can there be for a fly costume?
...Well, at least two or three.

Although this is an excellent point and click with funny moments and many animated cutscenes, I did notice a few issues. Act 2, set entirely within Count Nefarious’ Castle, is a lot shorter than Act 1, as though a lot of elements had to be cut from it. The original plans were for Toonstruck to be double its size and split across four acts, one disc for each, while the finished product only has two, with everything else cut out due to budget constraints. (The game's poor original sales didn't help. A Toonstruck 2 allegedly exists unreleased, but we have yet to see anything about that.) As a result, this game ends on a cliffhanger. And it shows, as even at the end we can think of quite a few unresolved plot threads. There are a few moments where the game shows its age; there’s the use of some stereotypes that are outdated nowadays, like the blatantly gay “carecrow” met during the story. Also the game crashed near the very end when I hadn’t saved in a while, and it took me 30 minutes to get back to that point, but – that’s partly on me, and unlike another game I covered recently, it only happened once.

I doubt this fortune-telling cat lady is to be trusted.

Still, great game with clever puzzles and many memorable characters. Yeah, not every solution makes sense, but that’s common in a point-and-click, plus we’re in a cartoon world so the silliness is entirely excusable. If you like point-and-click games, it’s one you absolutely should try.

Toonstruck is available on Steam for 9.99$ USD. (Also, finish and release Toonstruck 2 dammit! A guy can dream.)