Protagonist Billie, her pet Oscar, and The Mentor Aristotle
Billie Bust Up! is a musical 3D Platformer developed by British independent video game studio Giddy Goat Games (formerly known as Blueprint Games) set to release in 2024, following a successful campaign
on Kickstarter. It features a variety of talent, such as music composers Daniel Ingram (who worked on Littlest Pet Shop (2012) and My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic) and Gooseworx (creator of Little Runmo and The Amazing Digital Circus), and voice actors Michael Kovach, Sean Chiplock, and Edward Bosco, among others. Originally planned to be self-published, it was announced on August 16, 2023 that Humble Games would be supporting them.
Official Twitter; Official Youtube (containing Trailers, Development Footage, and Developer & Cast Q&A's).
A Pre-Alpha Demo was made publicly available through Steam and Itch.io (the latter password-locked due to Kickstarter backers getting early access to it), which contains a test level that demonstrates all of Billie and Oscar's abilities, as well as a boss fight against one of the villains, Fantoccio. Previous demos have been released, but only through an official Patreon, and only to patrons. For now, only material from Publicly Available Demos and Trailers should be listed below, as anything in pre-release material is subject to change during development.
Tropes Present in the Trailers and/or Demo Version:
- Affably Evil: Barnaby, the ghostly owl who is planned to be one of the four main bosses. In this storyboard preview released by the developers, he makes light of and even giggles at Billie having to kill herself in order to properly attend his party. He does not seem to be truly evil, in a sense, viewing dying as a joyful event.
- Art-Style Dissonance: The official website confirms that there will be a dark and serious storyline beneath the the colorful visuals and cartoony art style.
- Author Avatar: Billie is heavily based on one of the creators’ 15-16 year old self.
- Bilingual Rhyme: We have Fantoccio the puppet, who constantly peppers his Villain Song, "I've Had Enough of You", with Gratuitous French:
But why stop there? Add a lion, a bear. What's wrong, my petite chère (French for "little dear")? Why don't you smile?
- Boss-Arena Idiocy: Two examples in Fantoccio's boss fight:
- If he didn't use his projectile attack, Billie couldn't knock it back at him and stun him.
- If he didn't use either of his shockwave attacks (punching the stage with the giant floating hands, and an energy cable that acts like a guitar), he wouldn't damage the stage to the point of making part of it collapse on him.
- Bullet Hell: In Fantoccio's boss fight in the demo, he throws all sorts of different attacks at you, including falling debris or magic blasts, sweeping mops, giant clapping hands, and more. As the fight goes on, you'll have to deal with multiple types of attacks at the same time more and more frequently. In Barnaby’s chase, he will sing out his attacks and sometimes overwhelm you with them, notably one being put in a cage with alligators that copy your movements and follow behind you, while lava rains from above and electricity is sent through the cage.
- Cast Full of Gay: As seen in this TikTok, all the prominent characters, along with the vast majority of the supporting cast, are queer.
- Developer's Foresight: Not attacking Fantoccio while he's stunned will result in the background music skipping repeatedly until you do, with Fantoccio himself confused as to what you're doing. "That's your cue! Come on, don't hold back!"
- Double Jump: One of Billie's abilities, which she can perform in the Demo, is to summon a pair of wings that give her a huge jump, and can flap three extra times in mid-air.
- Four-Fingered Hands: The design of a number of characters, for instance Fantoccio and Aristotle, depict them with four-fingered hands. Billie, being a goat, is given three fingers instead.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: The Pre-Alpha Demo fight against Fantoccio ends with his stage-destroying attacks causing his theatre to collapse on top of him.
- Jiggle Physics: Billie's long ears move in a very flowing, bouncy way. From the developers’ Works in Progress, it is shown that they are animated separately from the rest of Billie.
- Medium Blending: Subverted. Barnaby appears to be 2D, being solid colors with a thick consistent outline; in reality, he's a 3D model like any other character but happens to be rendered as if he's in 2D space, an example of which may be seen here.
- Mickey Mousing: The game does label itself as a "Musical 3D Platformer", so the game runs on this. From what's available, Fantoccio and Barnaby's attacks sync up with each of their boss themes. This especially holds true when their respective songs are about to end; even if the player goes out of bounds (or, in one case, breaks the game such as by using the developer console and softlocking post-death), the game will automatically trigger the winning cutscene once the song reaches the final point.
- Ominous Owl: Barnaby is a goofy variation of this trope. Although he's flamboyant and silly about it, he spends the entire boss fight (or boss chase) morbidly suggesting all sorts of ways Billie can kill herself.
- Scary Jack-in-the-Box: In the demo, Fantoccio summons jack-in-the-box Mooks to attack Billie.
- Self-Disposing Villain: During Fantoccio's boss fight, all Billie does is smack his projectiles back at him a few times, with his ultimate demise coming from part of the stage collapsing due to Fantoccio's own attacks.
- Shout-Out:
- Barnaby's manor in the demo has portraits of him with other characters from other works including The Snatcher from A Hat in Time and Wally from Welcome Home.
- After escaping from Barnaby, Billie tumbles on the ground for a bit before ending up in a position that exactly matches Peter Griffin's well-known "death" pose.
- One of Billie's idle animations has them balancing on a magic ball in a pose highly resemblant of one of Raz's idle stances in Psychonauts 2.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
- Some of Billie's more difficult idle animations will end with her failing them, but will improve over time. For example; when she first balances on a ball, it quickly slips out from under her, but after doing it a few times, she will manage to balance successfully.
- During Fantoccio's boss fight, some of his more powerful attacks like slamming the ground with the giant floating hands and making shockwaves with The Power of Rock will shake the stage, with falling debris being a secondary hazard that's more a result of his attacks and not an attack on its own, eventually leading to a large part of the background crushing Fantoccio.
- Tennis Boss: In order to be able to damage Fantoccio, you have to bat his projectiles back at him - once in the first phase, and a couple of times in the second.
- Unwise Owl: Barnaby is a ghost owl with all the powers of a Reality Warper, but not as much power of being smart; he has to take a moment to realize Billie is alive instead of dead, and seemingly doesn't get the hint that Billie doesn't want to die or go to his party when she protests.
- "The Villain Sucks" Song: Downplayed. Scrimshaw's song is more about describing Elaine's cave and, in general, what to do once there, but it does start with "The pirate queen is clever and mean" and implies her parties aren't very enjoyable because she demands the partygoers to dance in pairs.
- Virtual Pet: This trailer features footage of "Oscar's Petting Game", an in-game activity in which you can play around with Billie's pet fox.
- World of Funny Animals: Almost all of the characters are anthropomorphic animals. The only exceptions so far are Oscar, a quadrupedal fox that acts like a Nearly Normal Animal, and Fantoccio, a wooden, vaguely humanoid marionette.
