As far as sequels with the word “Revenge” in the title go, Revenge of the Savage Planet is far from the dark second act the naming convention is known for. This follow-up to 2020’s Journey to the Savage Planet amplifies its predecessor’s zaniness and scale, with four lush alien planets to explore as you go about cataloging every plant and creature on the way to unfurling the game’s many secrets. It’s an impressive mishmash of genres, too. While predominantly a pulpy sci-fi action-adventure with metroidvania stylings, Revenge of the Savage Planet also incorporates elements of puzzle-solving, survival-crafting, creature-capturing, and even Animal Crossing-style decorating to its eclectic mix. Much like the first game, combat is still a glaring weakness, but this is a sequel that improves upon the original by almost every other metric.
In what would be a humorous twist if the situation weren’t so common, Revenge of the Savage Planet’s narrative is clearly influenced by the circumstances that led to the game’s creation. Typhoon Studios, the developer behind Journey to the Savage Planet, was acquired by Google in 2019, just a few short months before the game’s release. The Canadian studio was purchased to create games for Google’s cloud-based platform, Stadia, but was unceremoniously shuttered when the short-lived platform failed. Much of the team formed a new studio called Raccoon Logic and managed to secure the Savage Planet IP, leading to the creation of Revenge of the Savage Planet and its story of familiar corporate incompetence.
You play as a nameless intergalactic colonizer who, after emerging from a 100-year cryosleep, discovers that they’re now a member of Alta Interglobal, a holdings company that acquired your former employer, Kindred Aerospace, while you were sleeping. Oh, and you’ve also been made redundant, as Alta laid off all the ex-Kindred staff immediately following the acquisition. Sound familiar? Now marooned in an unfamiliar galaxy, your ultimate goal is to exact revenge on your former employer and return home by any means possible.
Knowing Raccoon Logic’s backstory adds a not-so-subtle tinge of ire to its pointed satire of corporate greed, mismanagement, and sheer stupidity. It’s not quite as scathing as you might expect, though, as above all else, Revenge of the Savage Planet is a joyous and optimistic game that refuses to take itself too seriously. It doesn’t matter if it’s poking fun at CEOs with a myriad of irreverent FMVs or dropping you onto another vibrant planet teeming with peculiar alien life. The story isn’t particularly deep but remains at its best when pulling on the thread of corporate ineptitude. When it veers away from this path for the final act–becoming a detached meta-commentary on game design–the story underwhelms.
Still, this is a late-game setback that doesn’t sour the comical irreverence fueling the game up to that point. From a song about urinating on the company dime to a commercial for a crypto nostril miner where minted boogers exist on the boogerchain, Revenge of the Savage Planet’s Tim & Eric-esque humor is hit or miss, but I never found the misses grating. The switch from a first-person perspective to a third-person one also contributes to the game’s comedic tone. Whether you’re walking, sprinting, wading through knee-deep water, or kicking a furry creature up the backside, the player-character moves with the sort of whimsical jaunt that resembles a Looney Tunes cartoon. You’ll slip and slide across green goo and burst out of creatures that swallow you whole, adding a slapstick element to your exploration of these alien worlds.
The shift in perspective does lose some of the connective tissue that tied the original game to Metroid Prime, but I think it’s a positive change–even if it feels slightly more uniform as a result. You can still scan each planet’s ecosystems of flora and fauna–discovering tidbits that will put a smile on your face or deepen your understanding of the game world–and progression is dictated by a lock-and-key system that requires you to gradually unlock upgrades to access previously inaccessible areas. But as a third-person game, Raccoon Logic is also able to stretch its platforming pedigree a lot more. Each planet is vertically designed to empower this newfound emphasis on platforming, whether you’re ascending onto floating rocks in the sky or descending into the bowels beneath a planet’s surface.
While you initially start the game with a double jump, you eventually unlock a whip that doubles as a grappling hook, allowing you to latch onto specific surfaces and grind energy rails. Combine this with a thunderous stomp attack, a device that lets you explore underwater, and each planet’s hand-crafted feel, and simply traversing these vibrant worlds is highly rewarding. And that’s not to mention the sense of progression derived from gradually unlocking all of these varied and impactful upgrades. Even with an objective marker on screen, I found myself being frequently pulled in multiple directions at once, as my attention was grabbed by a path of giant mushrooms leading up a cliff face, an enticing opening to a cave, or an obstacle I could now bypass with my most recent upgrade. Exploration is often rewarded with everything from health and stamina boosts to further evidence of Alta’s crimes, leading to your own revenge on the heinous corporation. But all four planets are visually alluring, too, presenting diverse biomes with peculiar ecosystems that interact independently of whatever you’re doing.
You first land on Stellaris Prime, a verdant planet that’s not dissimilar from Journey to the Savage Planet’s ARY-26. Stellaris Prime quickly becomes your base of operations as you establish a home in the swamps of Nu Florida, complete with a 3D printer for crafting new upgrades and your own customizable living space. There’s a generous amount of furniture and unusual accessories you can use to make this habitat feel like a home away from home. I had my own kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, and gym, complete with a human-sized hamster wheel, a hugging machine, and a toilet that sucks any waste into a miniature black hole. There’s no incentive to do any of this. It has no bearing or impact on gameplay, and you can’t even interact with most of the items, but I still appreciated the option to indulge in some personalized customization.
The rest of the planets cover the gamut of possible biomes, from the arid deserts of Xephyr to Zenithian Rift’s contrasting amalgamation of a frozen tundra and an active volcano. Aside from aesthetic variety, it’s also satisfying to figure out what’s new in each sandbox and how your tools can interact with the ecosystem. For instance, one of your most crucial upgrades is the Power Hose and its Goo Ingestor. There are three types of goo, all color-coded to signify their various status effects. Some creatures and plants spew it out, while others explode with the stuff when they die, leaving behind green, red, and purple globules. By using the Goo Ingestor, you can harvest it from specific plants, then use the Power Hose to spray it wherever you please. Sometimes this can be used in satisfying ways to solve puzzles, like using the conductive purple goo to create paths of electricity and power up electromagnetic vines to open a path forward. Other times, you can use it to defeat enemies, using the same purple goo to electrocute creatures or igniting the flammable green goo to engulf anything standing on it.
Despite this, combat is still unremarkable, for the most part. Without any of the goo-specific plants around, you’re saddled with nothing more than a dinky pea shooter. Using this slow and unsatisfying weapon to defeat enemies is so tedious that I mostly avoided it if I could, but this isn’t always an option. There is a new capture mechanic this time around, where you can daze a creature by targeting its weak point, then use your whip to lasso and teleport it to a habitat on your home base. Doing so can unlock upgrades and cosmetic items like a different color scheme for your space suit, with a few of the game’s objectives revolving around capturing a particular creature. Doing so is slightly faster than killing them outright, so I often took the opportunity even if I’d already captured that enemy type before. That was not out of mercy, but because combat is just that dull.
These misgivings aside, Revenge of the Savage Planet offers up a carefree adventure that’s a rollicking good time either solo or with a friend–whether online or in split-screen. It’s a more confident and varied sequel, with a shift in perspective that maximizes its slapstick comedy and platforming chops. Combat is a letdown, but everything around it is a joy, from finding creative ways to use its gadgets and solve puzzles to simply exploring every nook and cranny of its diverse and bountiful planets. Revenge of the Savage Planet may have been born from less-than-ideal circumstances, but it’s evident from playing it just how much Raccoon Logic is reveling in it existing at all.
