Freedom Finger piqued my interest after hearing about some of the voice talent involved. That the likes of Nolan North and John Di Maggio were involved with a little indie shoot ‘em up seems pretty cool. That and the fact you are a spaceship shaped like a hand shooting out of your middle finger. Yes, this looked like my kind of game.

Opening up a new game I always play around with the settings. Here there are censorship options, which makes sense as you know there’ll be plenty of swearing so options to censor dialogue and subtitles are reasonable. But then there’s an extra option on the bottom “Blizzard”. Curious, I turned it on and the screen switches to a ‘loading screen’. ‘Scanning system’, ‘Adjusting social credit’, ‘Pleasing shareholders’ and Censoring content’ all rear their heads on screen. Funny stuff.

But then it all kicks off. Up pops a giant Chinese flag and ‘F***dom Finger has been corrected. Enjoy.’ You’re kicked back to the main menu, now all in Chinese. The background has been replaced by a black and white video loop of cultural revolution era China. When you try to start a game, you’re blocked: ‘Content denied by state’. Holy Shit.

I live in China. I have lived here for the best part of a decade. I bought this game in China... off a Chinese seller... on a Chinese website. If they only knew.

The game has not even started yet.

Freedom Finger itself is a solid shoot ‘em up. You shoot lasers from your middle finger and can otherwise grab and throw enemies and objects. Shoot everything, make it to the end of the stage. There are 12 levels each with 3 stages plus an end level boss. Simple, but good nonetheless. Simple does not mean easy. Did I have to lower the difficulty before the end of the second world? You bet your ass I did. Did I have to switch to diaper difficulty before the end and still die a few times? Damn, freakin’-A.

What of course makes Freedom Finger stand out is its sense of humour, vulgarity and ‘no shits given’ attitude. Think Team America in space: we have to stop Chinese terrorists on the moon, for freedom, and beer, also there are Russians and lots of cock sauce. The voice acting, as you may expect with the people involved is exceptional and easily on a par with anything done in any higher budget contemporary games.

Freedom Finger is not only funny, it looks and sounds incredible. The hand-drawn art-style fits superbly with the overall game design. Each stage is built around a specifically chosen song. The way the music is used and timed with enemy behaviours reminded me of the music levels in Rayman Legends. I can’t say these were as consistently well implemented as in Rayman, but they are still largely very well done. The music selected is eclectic and undeniably top-tier.

In terms of level theme, clearly the artists were given carte-blanche to do whatever the hell they wanted. How else do you explain turning into a sperm ship (still complete with middle-finger laser) while gunning down a still developing mutant fetus. The next stage is then in a child’s bedroom being defended by their toys, followed by an 8-bit themed level. Is it wacky? Crass? Coarse? All of the above and more, but it never comes across as random or trying too hard. It all fits within the overall theme and aesthetic.

My one criticism would be with a particular element of the level design. While you can tell stages are coming to an end as the music winds down, visually they stop very abruptly. You’re left with the impression that there is more still to go, but the music has finished and therefore the stage clear screen must appear. A simple animation lingering on the screen, or zooming off to the right could have alleviated this and it does seem an odd oversight on an otherwise immaculately detailed piece of software.

Strikingly obvious her is that there was a singular vision of how the developers wanted this game to be and they were able to deliver. All aspects from visuals, audio, writing, acting and gameplay feed into that vision to create a wonderfully unique game. The attention to detail is phenomenal. The artists did not need to draw everything by hand; they wanted to. The developers didn’t need to put in that Blizzard censorship; they wanted to. They didn’t need to add branching pathways through the game’s story, but they did. The swearing and dick jokes are gratuitous, but that’s what they wanted so that’s what’s happening. The developers didn’t need to make this game at all, but they clearly had a lot of fun in doing so. A product of market research and boardroom interference this definitely is not.

Underneath the shiny, outrageous exterior there is a deep and seriously challenging shoot ‘em up experience. I can heartily recommend this to genre fans as well as fans of animated humour. Will this game offend you? No more than watching an episode of South Park would. Being offended by something like this may say more about you than the game. Yet I can only see its rude nature as being the reason many have avoided this game in favour of others. It’s clearly not for kids, but do yourself a favour and give it a try once they’re in bed. I’ve just completed my first playthrough, but I will certainly be back for more to go through the levels I missed this time around.

If you, like me, feel nostalgic for an age where developers had freedom to be weird, push boundaries and not be beholden to shareholders then Freedom Finger will be a welcome breath of fresh air, potty-mouth and all.