Loonyland: Halloween Hill
Review by TogerJune 2004
Ever wonder what villains were like as children? Would Dr. Evil try to extort “one meellion dollars” for the use of his sandbox? Did Malificent cast sleeping spells on pretty playmates wanting to share her toys? As a child, Dr. Lunaticmegalomaniacal, Elvis-impersonating, psychotic, brain-transferring mad scientistwas a goody two-shoes and saved Halloween Hill from an infestation of werewolves, zombies and other assorted things-that-go-bump-in-the-night. Who’s Dr. Lunatic? Read on …
Loonyland: Halloween Hill is a top-down, third-person, action/adventure title from independent developer Hamumu Software. It’s actually the first of a trilogy featuring Dr. Lunatic; the other two games have you trying to keep Loony, as he’s known to his friends, from realizing his maniacal plans.
It’s 1811, and deep in the heart of Bulgaria, Halloween Hill has been overrun with all manner of strange, creepy creatures. Loony has been tasked to figure out what’s gone wrong and put it right. Of course, that’s only the main quest; among other jobs, Loony is also tapped to rescue a kitten from the haunted forest, clean out the zombies from Zombiton’s cemetery and find potion ingredients for the local witch. In exchange, residents will reward Loony with either gemscoin of the realmor useful items such as a torch.
Gameplay is keyboard (or joystick) controlled, although there are only a couple of keys to memorize: arrow keys for movement and one key each to fire Loony’s slingshot or whatever special weapon you’re currently carrying. Special weapons include wacky things like a potted cactus that throws pointy needles in all directions, a whoopee cushion that emits poisonous gas (what other kind of gas is there?) and a boomerang.
As you progress through Loonyland, you’ll encounter all sorts of bizarre creatures: werewolves, zombies, one-eyed creepy-crawlers, ghosts, gas-emitting evil trees and fire-breathing toads. My favorites were the zombies with their itty-bitty Rastafarian dreadlocks sticking out of the tops of their nasty grey heads. The locals are just as odd: one farmer goes a tad overboard with the fertilizer and creates killer pumpkins, another runs away from home to live life as a werewolf in order to escape his nagging wife.
Loonyland’s puzzles mainly consist of navigating maze-like structures picking off critters, flipping switches and locating the various keys and power-ups littered throughout the area. One of the more clever puzzles was pushing pieces of broken logs into place in order to get flammable gas to ignite and light the area. Actually finding the pieces, in the dark, and pushing them into the correct place to complete the circuit was cause for celebration in my house!
One of the best features of Loonyland is its secrets and bonuses that the player unlocks as a reward for completing the game or laying the smackdown on a baddie quickly. Not only will new game mods open up, you’ll also receive merit badges, which act as “cheats.” Some of the badges are downright sillyone, called “Mad Skeelz,” turns the bowling balls in the bowling mod into kittens. Others include such abilities as being able to save anywhere or playing through the game as a toad, werewolf or witch.
Speaking of saving anywhere, unless you’ve gotten the appropriate merit badge you’ll have to be content with seeking out the numerous save points to save your progress. I should also mention that once you’ve rid a specific area of creatures, they will respawn if you should travel that way again. Not only that, it seems as if they’re all laying in wait for you as you reappear from a tunnel or cave. The respawn isn’t a bad thing as it’s a good way to replenish your gems, should that be necessary, or collect specific items like the monster dolls.
Visually, Loonyland is bright and colorful. Backgrounds have a prerendered cartoonish style, while character models have a slight 3D look to them. The majority of the human characters look so much alike, it was sometimes difficult to remember who to go back to once I’d completed a quest. Loony, on the other hand, looks so much like an early Tony Tough, I’m thinking he’s an evil twin or, at the very least, a distant cousin.
Loonyland’s sound is … different. Some of the sounds are what you’d expect to hear: doors creaking as they open, mud sucking at your boots as Loony shleps through the swamp. What took me by surprise is a lot of the sounds appeared to have been organically createdby mouth. As a kid, I’m sure you made that weird “p-qu” sound when firing an imaginary gun or laser? Well, that’s the sound I heard when Loony fired on the gravestones in the cemetery! Clever.
Voice work is limited to one or two words at the start of a conversation followed by written text. Some of the characters actually had quite a bit to say, even while Loony is getting thrashed by some critter.
Music for Loonyland is very well done. The opening theme sets the tone of the game with a rhythm and blues version of what passed for Caribbean music in the 40san organ backed by drums, terrific bass track and what sounded like, to me, a skeletal xylophone.
This is a cute game! The only thing I thought the game lacked was a way to reread the quest information. I could call up the various quests that I’d collected by pressing the Esc key, but I couldn’t get the details regarding the quest. At one point, I’d received at least four quests and couldn’t remember where I was supposed to go for any of them, so I ended up just wandering around the map, where I collected another couple of quests and still didn’t know where to go for the others.
If you’re thinking that this is just a standard hack ‘n’ slash or kill-or-be-killed game, you couldn’t be further from the truth. Remember some of the wacky shareware games of days gone by? Loonyland evokes that feeling of silliness and just plain fun from the early days of gaming. You won’t spend your time banging your head on the desk because the game’s specs are “pie in the sky,” but you will spend a lot of time laughing and enjoying a fun-filled game. As Hamumu’s opening screen declares, “it just doesn’t get any dumber than this.” 
The Verdict
The Lowdown
Developer: Hamumu Publisher: Hamumu Release Date: March 2001; ver 2.0 released May 2004
Available for: 
Four Fat Chicks Links
Screenshots
System Requirements
Not specified
Where to Find It
Hamumu 19.95 (download; add $5 for CD version)
Prices/links current as of 06/08/04Links provided for informational purposes only. FFC makes no warranty with regard to any transaction entered into by any party(ies).
Copyright © Electric Eye Productions. All rights reserved. No reproduction in whole or in part without express written permission.