Hop to it!

Rubato is a smug frog and the star of RUBATO, this self-titled game, which is a humorous 2D collectathon platformer… and also some other stuff. I’ll get to the “other stuff” later.

The game quickly establishes its sense of humour and visual style, starting off with a disastrous game of pool at an office floating in space. A guy hits the cue ball so hard that it blows up the Earth and bounces to the other planets of the solar system and smashes them, too. Now you, as Rubato (the frog), are helping collect the planet bits scattered all over and restoring them.

(I’m going to use “RUBATO” in all caps to refer to the game itself, and “Rubato” with just an uppercase R to refer to the player character.)

Putting the planets back together

The gameplay of RUBATO is mainly focused on being a 2D platforming collectathon. You explore all over the sprawling levels for “planet bits”, this game’s main collectible item. Collecting enough bits lets you restore a planet. As a collectathon, RUBATO is thankfully not overburdened with pointless stuff to collect: it’s only “balls” used as currency and “planet bits” as the main objective.

The game’s signature gameplay feature is Rubato’s tongue, which you use often in physics-based scenarios, like swinging, pulling boxes, and throwing stuff. It’s a necessary part of traversing levels, solving puzzles, and fighting bosses. And like an old-school Source engine game, there’s even prop flying!

This game loves its 2D physics. After defeating just the first boss, you get a rocket launcher as a reward, and of course, you can rocket jump. Over the course of the game, you encounter more physics-related gimmicks, like using a vacuum cleaner to suck up debris.

As I hinted at earlier, RUBATO has “other stuff” piled on top of the 2D collectathon. The game is packed with surprises, like regular, sudden changes in gameplay. It usually does this as a joke, but these changes are also sometimes used to accentuate major story moments. I count over a dozen of these diversions, including racing, building a boat with physics props, and abducting cows.

Overall, RUBATO is not a difficult game. Rubato’s max health starts at an ample 5 in a game where enemies aren’t that numerous or aggressive. You can upgrade this up to 13, which is ridiculously generous. With that much health, the only thing that can threaten him is the postgame challenge level, Mystery Toilet X, which is a long gauntlet packed with enemies and hazards. The game also offers accessibility options, like invincibility.

A.A.A. Gaming (Always Absolutely Amusing)

RUBATO is the first game in a long while that I’ve found funny enough to make me smile and laugh like an idiot. It has a very silly, childish, and irreverent sense of humour that runs deep in the game’s DNA, rather than only being funny because the dialogue has jokes in it. This starts right at that first cutscene with the Earth blowing up.

Visual and sound humour both play a big part in the game. There are often jarring clashes in visual style, where the game’s cartoony pixel art is mixed with wacky 3D renders or full-motion video. Background music and sound effects sometimes sound unexpectedly unfitting or corny. These style changes also end up building a transition to major plot points later on.

There are also little incidental gags hidden everywhere for you to find, like funny background details and interactive gags. I appreciate the developer’s willingness to spend time adding these little jokes just to acknowledge when you do or notice something unusual. For example, clicking on Rubato plays a punch sound effect and does nothing else, and the game lets you press movement keys during a loading screen.

Also, to customize Rubato’s look, there are lots of goofy costumes. (I didn’t know how to fit this point into the article.)

The real RUBATO (no spoilers)

The lighthearted tone and goofy premise of RUBATO uncovers plot points that build into a more serious story with several twists. What the game’s story is really about is gradually revealed through dialogue and cutscenes. Plenty of these revelations make you rethink the silly things you saw early in the game, so with hindsight, I realize now that a lot of major plot stuff did get foreshadowed right from the start but I just didn’t notice the first time.

In defiance to 2D platformer conventions, RUBATO puts serious effort in its cutscenes to tell its story. In my experience, if a 2D platformer has cutscenes, it’s mainly dialogue boxes with a few little square portraits per character. Most cutscenes in RUBATO instead use large, expressive character sprites, acted out on the game scene with a great sense of comedic timing.

Those abrupt art style changes I mentioned earlier also get into some of the cutscenes to emphasize especially important plot moments. They mix animation mediums, dropping the game’s usual sprite work for fully animated 2D, N64-style 3D, more experimental styles, and even a bit of full-motion video. Near the end of the game, the climax of the story delivers a big twist (and the loudest statement of what RUBATO is really about) with a surprisingly lengthy chain of interactive cutscenes that whip around and mix up all of these mediums for great dramatic effect.

This was only part 1 of the Director’s Cut

The developer, dconn, announced a set of major updates as a Director’s Cut, meant to address their own issues with the game. So far, the first part of it is out as version 1.2, and that’s what I played. It apparently focused on improving the early parts of the game and clarifying the story, with the next update focusing on the late game.

Even in this form with only half of the Director’s Cut released, I enjoyed RUBATO a lot. The release of the second half would be a good opportunity to collect the planet bits again, maybe next time with hard mode on.