We’re down to the last couple of my PAX East previews, and what I’ve come down to as my two favorite games of the show. It’s been hard to choose which one to save for last, but not as hard as it was to actually describe to my friends at the event what Freaked Fleapit even is. I mean, with a title like that, you already know you’re stepping into something strange. When you actually look at it, it’s like staring into a mysterious void and being met with a glowing, red eyeball and a massive, toothy grin grinding its teeth on a bedazzled kazoo. But, like, it’s also kind of like Crypt of the Necrodancer.
Whittled down to its buzzwords, Freaked Fleapit is a music/rhythm-based dungeon-crawler, roguelike, and dating sim all in one package. It’s also driven by one of the most unhinged, loud, and trashy anime-like styles I’ve ever seen in a video game. It’s like someone took the Yandere page from the Anime Aesthetics Wiki, tossed it in a blender with Persona and Ren & Stimpy, and decided that wasn’t wild enough. Add some overwhelming, dark, thumping electronic music and a little Binding of Isaac, and the rest of the picture gets more or less filled in.
You play as a typical dark-haired, noodly, and timid visual novel protagonist type, who ends up in the afterlife ahead of schedule. The folks running the show down there are a bunch of women who have no interest in things like human values, ethics, or anything peaceful, generally. They can’t decide what to do with you, so you end up getting a sentient neck tie stapled to your chest then kicked down an elevator shaft to survive hellish dungeons and earn your way back to the land of the living. Within this group you have multiple brands of mad scientist, an extremely sketchy bartender, a mysterious angel-like middle manager, and a quiet animal person who didn’t do much in my demo. These are your dating subjects, folks.
The dungeon-crawling gameplay was overwhelming at first, especially since I never actually played Crypt of the Necrodancer, which Freaked Fleapit seems fairly derivative of. The music has a heavy beat, and if you time your movements with said beat, you get rewarded with an easier time. Enemies also move to the beat, and will either do their own thing or chase you with specifically-timed attacks. Your job is to maneuver around these obstacles, defeating enemies and finding power-ups, all while maintaining your rhythm. A boss fight at the end then brings out its own gimmicks and challenges. Win or lose, your necktie buddy yanks you back to home base where you then get to spend some activity points to interact with the demonic women looking for every chance to torture you.
I got to see a couple of the “date” scenes in my demo time, and both of them were hilarious. It’s clear that the protagonist doesn’t want to be there, and is more scared for his life interacting with these people than he is fighting down in the dungeons. The dates are quite simple, having you do things like run around the small hub space collecting ingredients for a cake. But your reward is some absolutely wild art depicting the situation with a degenerate level of violent glee that’s truly impressive to behold.
Between the over the top vibes, excellent voice acting (I had the Japanese VO for my demo, English wasn’t available yet), and legitimately cool music and gameplay, I didn’t want to put Freaked Fleapit down. This game has a lot going for it, mixing horror with ironic sleaze for maximum aesthetic affect. It’s not gonna be for everyone, but for folks who don’t mind when heavy genre work gets deliberately trashy, especially in horror-adjacent contexts, Freaked Fleapit seems like a real trip.
Freaked Fleapit is coming to PC, but does not currently have a release date or window. A hands-on demo was provided by the publisher at PAX East for the purpose of this preview.
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replyLucas White posted a new article, Freaked Fleapit is an intense musical roguelike with delightfully unhinged anime vibes
