Review grubmaiden 4/5 · Apr 20, 2026
The story... is true...
One might know me as someone who's a big fan of driving electronic music. I've made a list of video games featuring techno on the soundtracks. I've logged.. nearly 1500 works of electronic dance music on rateyourmusic (jeez). So after seeing ytpmv authors like Icesnort meme on the game, and hearing it would eventually be ported to modern machines through …
One might know me as someone who's a big fan of driving electronic music. I've made a list of video games featuring techno on the soundtracks. I've logged.. nearly 1500 works of electronic dance music on rateyourmusic (jeez). So after seeing ytpmv authors like Icesnort meme on the game, and hearing it would eventually be ported to modern machines through an SDL source port, I got interested and found it was playable online and mobile in its completed form. An astounding, incredible work of electronic music. Mostly acid arpeggios and the like you'd expect from a 90s video game. Not techno, more like.. prog housey a bit. I adore it.
What makes it even better is seeing the unfinished Amiga version's music with the vocal track. Addictive, charming, genius, memetic. Moonchild, woah oh oh oh. You've got the power to be his friend. It's the beginning of an exciting and new story. The story is true. It's now completely obvious to me why Icesnort got so obsessed with it. And just take a look at this beautiful work of Amiga art. The pixelated, but dense enough to look nearly like pre-rendered 3D in parts, sluggishness, harsh outlines and pillow gradients. Too many colors stuffed into something so low resolution. An unmistakably slapdash, distractingly raw and amateurish style that I can't pry my eyes away form even now in the middle of the night.
Actually playing this web/PC version, it's just about what I expected it to be. A bit weird, slippery and loose, with hard as fuck segments demanding a lot of either skill or patience. At some points it feels masochistic, but it's sure to weave in some semblance of a story in hilarious saturday morning cartoon style bubble font between the levels. It reminds me of something like Globy rather than something like Bubsy, in that it was a game made with love instead of being made with hatred. I adore that the creators decided to drop the source code so we could all have the power to be his friend. It's also great to read about some of the behind the scenes and ways it was all put together. The memes are great and seemingly made for me, which I'm always skeptical of. But I the power to be his friend was calling out to me louder than my fears of looking like a trend following chungus.