"Only four truly unruly heroes can turn back that dark tide and restore order to heaven and earth."
Unruly Heroes is a Platform Game developed by the French Company Magic Design Studios. Its premise and characters are heavily based off Journey to the West.
In it, you play as one of four heroes (Wukong, Sandmonk, Kihong and Sanzang) tasked with recovering the Sacred Parchment and restore order to heaven and earth.
Unruly Heroes
was released on January 23rd, 2019 and is currently playable on Nintendo Switch, Windows PCs, Xbox One and Playstation 4.
Unruly Heroes contains examples of:
- Adaptational Badass: Sanzang. In the original novel he was an utterly helpless wuss, who would faint and/or despair at even the slightest hint of danger. In the game he's just as much of a capable fighter as the other three. Justified as he is a playable character and would be pretty much useless otherwise.
- Ambiguous Time Period: The game seems to take place in ancient China, but the exact time period is never specified.
- Ambiguously Human: Sandmonk looks mostly normal, if it weren't for the fact that he has green skin and yellow eyes.
- Beast Man: All of the heroes, except for Sanzang.
- Big Good: Guanyin Pusa, who acts as Exposition Fairy and The Narrator both.
- Cast Full of Crazy: Every character the heroes encounter seems to have one or two quirks, whether they be bosses or just NPCs.
- Character Title: The titular unruly heroes are also the playable characters.
- Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Guanyin, with her tendency to make jokes at the most inopportune times.
- Double Jump: Wukong and Sandmonk both have this ability.
- Homage: The whole game is a very loving one to Journey To The West.
- Falling Damage: Averted. You can fall from any height and not hurt your character.
- Fiery Redhead: Wukong and Sandmonk, if their battle cries tell us anything.
- Death Is a Slap on the Wrist:
- Should one of your heroes die, you can simply revive them by giving their soul a good smack.
- Additionally, if you die as one hero you will resurrect at the last lantern you lit as the hero next to them in the roster.
- Eldritch Abomination: Most of the bosses.
- Ground Pound: You can perform this type of attack to break frail platforms and squash enemies.
- Heroic Mime: Apart from the occasional grunt or scream, none of the heroes speak throughout the entire game.
- Inflating Body Gag: Many of Kihong's moves involve him puffing up his body.
- Informed Flaw: The titular Unruly Heroes never seem to do anything that unruly in the game itself. Though if we assume each of them keeps his original backstory from the book...
- Justified Save Point: The lanterns you can light by feeding them the souls of the enemies you beat up serve as this.
- Life Meter: Each of the heroes has his own individual health bar.
- Mighty Glacier: Sandmonk.
- Pals with Jesus: The heroes are on pretty good terms with Guanyin, the Goddess of mercy.
- Pig Man: Kihong.
- Pungeon Master: Guanyin loves to sprinkle little jokes throughout her dialogue.
- Rolling Attack: Kihongs Limit Break.
- Spikes of Doom: A whole lot of them in just about every level.
- Spin Attack:
- Sanzangs Limit Break causes his orbs to grow bigger and spin around him in a wide circle, damaging any enemies in close vicinity.
- Kihongs Limit Break has him blowing himself up like a balloon and then spin forward.
- Turn Red: The bosses will turn more aggressive the more you deplete their health bar.
- Unlockable Content:
- You can use the coins you collect throughout the levels to buy different outfits for the heroes.
- Collecting pieces of the Sacred Parchment will grant you access to different artworks.
- Utopia: What the land used to be before the destruction of the Sacred Parchment, according to Guanyin.
- Wall Jump: Every hero has this ability as default.
- Zerg Rush: The enemies main way of attacking. Bosses will usually call up a bunch of mooks to fight you when their health bar is low.
- Well, at least they'll give it a shot!
