I took OK K.O.! Let’s Play Heroes for a spin at E3 in Los Angeles, and this arcade-style brawler with RPG elements quickly drew me in with its engaging characters, surprisingly deep combat system and vividly realized world.
Developed by indie studio Capy Games, OK K.O.! Let’s Play Heroes ties into an animated series OK K.O.! Let’s Play Heroes coming to Cartoon Network this fall. The show itself is a labor of love several years in the making from Ian Jones-Quartey, an animator, writer and voice actor who’s worked on Adventure Time and Steven Universe.
OK K.O.! Let’s Play Heroes is made for game geeks, by game geeks. It “very much pulls all these video game tropes into the DNA of the show and plotlines,” explained Dan Vader, lead writer and designer at Capy Games.
Even in a brief demo, the game’s polish and personality exceeded my expectations. It looks and feels like playing a cartoon. The environments are full of bright eye candy, while the characters come across as fully realized creations, with no need for lengthy introductions. One reason for this is Cartoon Network and Capy Games are working together closely on both projects. “We’re making the game in parallel with the show, as opposed to just, like, making a game after. They’ve been giving us ideas for the game, we’re giving them ideas for the show, it’s just a really cool cross-pollination,” Vader said.
In the game, you take control of the infectiously upbeat K.O., who aspires to be the world’s greatest hero. To achieve his goal, he takes a job at a strip mall for heroes, Lakewood Plaza Turbo. Sure, he’s just mopping up puddles of slime in the convenience store for now, but he’s got that ambition, baby. K.O.s boss is the exceptionally ripped Mr. Gar, who’s made me confident the “necktie over a bare, muscled torso” look is going to be all the rage for gents come A/W 2017. K.O.’s bezzies are the snarky clerk Enid and the bro-dacious connoisseur of vans, Rad.
In the game, Lakewood Plaza functions as your homebase, and you’ll obtain sidequests and advance the central story by chatting with the other characters scattered about the mall, rendered in crisp and vibrant 2-D that looks, at first glance, way more like a cartoon than a game. Completing tasks for your friends and fellow heroes allows you to collect their Pow Cards, which K.O. can equip in battle to execute special attack moves. As the game progresses, you’ll collect more of these cards and can swap out which you choose to take into battle.
You can’t have a whole host of heroes without any villains to take down, so both the game and show will pit the denizens of Lakewood Plaza against the nefarious androids belonging to the insidious corporate monolith across the street, Boxmore. Our demo saw us tasked with protecting Rad’s beloved van from Boxmore vandals, leading to a rumble between K.O. and several fast-moving clonebots.
While I took a shameful butt-whooping in my first attempt, the game’s combat mechanics were pretty easy to pick up. It’s got the look of a straightforward 2D brawler, but as K.O. gets stronger and enemies get tougher, blind button-mashing likely won’t cut it. Thankfully, the fighting system in OK K.O.! Let’s Play Heroes seems to offer a good deal of depth in terms of combos and Pow Cards.
While storylines won’t explicitly overlap between the game and the show, there’s sure to be plenty of easter eggs for those who tune in to both. That said, OK K.O.! Let’s Play Heroes is an easy-on-the-eyes, giggle-inducing treat to play in its own right. The demo provided a tantalizing teaser of a world I’m excited to return to and spend more time in.
There’s not yet a firm release date for the game, but it’s slated to come to PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Steam in the fall, around the same time as the series debuts on Cartoon Network. In the meantime, you can watch six mini-episodes of OK K.O.! Let’s Be Heroes on the Cartoon Network official site.
