“Find The Mechanical Boar. Kill it and cook it.” In writing, the first line you right needs to grab the attention of the reader. Jazzpunk is a perfect example of how to capture your attention and keep it through a minimalistic, hack like game. Jazzpunk attracted me by the name and I was never bored with it for its brief existence.

Jazzpunk is a game made by Necrophone Entertainment and distributed by Adult Swim. It can be found on Steam under ‘Adventure,’ and is normally priced at $15. You play as polyblank, a polygonal secret agent sent all over the world to accomplish various random goals. The game consists mostly of old adventure game style puzzles (find object A rub it on object B to open door C) and random cut away references to games that were popular over 10 years ago.

The selling point of this game was the humor. The experience was genuinely funny and the game knows exactly just how stupid it really is. The first level of the game, where your goal is to break into soviet communist headquarters, contains a knock off version of frogger, a pizza zombie survival simulator and spies hiding behind two dimensional trees. Puzzles range from finding hidden objects, like a frozen woolly mammoth on a beach, to shaking a box of cereal out to find a key hidden inside. The game was hilarious to play through once, but, as with all comical games, it would not bear multiple play-throughs unless you were showing the game to a friend. In this way this game is similar to, but not quite as entertaining, as the Stanley Parable, one of the best games of 2013.

The game looks and plays very awkwardly. The visual aspects are part of the art style, and succeed at setting the tone of a game that could have easily been made in the ’90s. The game’s main problem, however, is with its length. The game takes only two hours to beat. Coupled with the lack of replayability, it is hard to justify paying full price for the game. While the experience is very enjoyable, my recommendation for buying the game comes down to whether or not you weigh the price worth a few enjoyable hours.

I will end my review with a list of some of the things that I encountered  playing this game:

Hipster pie, fly swatters that turn people into flies, exploding sheep, rake to the face homicide, horse drugs and the ability to kiss anything.

3/5