Video Game / The Crackpet Show

Are you ready to get famous?

The Crackpet Show is a Roguelike top-down Shoot 'Em Up by Polish developer Vixa Games and published by Ravenage Games on December 15, 2022 on Steam and the Nintendo Switch. It was released on GOG.com on May 23, 2023.

After the End, when humans are no more, the world becomes dominated by mutated animals called Crackpets. For their own amusement and fame, they hold a Deadly Game that is broadcast as a TV show where these animals go through a gladiator-esque battle against each other before facing a giant boss that can easily claim any "lucky" soul that has survived prior bloodshed.

And the player is one such participant.

The Crackpet Show is inspired from Happy Tree Friends and Enter the Gungeon, as it mixes the premise of cartoon animals being killed gruesomely from the former and the roguelite top-down gunplay from the latter. The player (up to four multiplayer) picks one of the eight Crackpets to play as^note Bunny, Cowie, Rusty (rooster), Sharky, Crocodile, Panda, Goat, or Piggy. The game initially came with the first four characters, but later updates added the latter characters. and one of the classes for their starting weapon and item. The main campaign is designed like a TV show, with seasons representing worlds and episodes representing levels. An episode consists of randomly-generated stages that branch differently and each can be either the basic "kill all enemies" stage without any reward or provide something special, requiring the player to work with what the episode spits out in the current run. The player can also fight minibosses, but in general all episodes end with a major boss fight. The player can earn Fame to earn Upgrade Coins to be used for weapon/item/perk upgrades, Likes for the current run's currency used to buy at shop stages, and Trophies to unlock sponsor support to ease gameplay. Weapons, item, and perks are removed upon failing/clearing an episode, though the player may be able to mitigate somewhat like using a Stash stage to store a copy of their equipped weapon for a later run.

In a heartwarming gesture, the game would eventually collaborate with its inspiration eight months later in the form of The Crackpet Show: Happy Tree Friends Edition Downloadable Content which was released on September 27, 2023. At the same time, the game (with the DLC preinstalled) also supports more platforms like Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Epic Games Store starting on the same date. It is also compatible with the Steam Deck. It features playable characters from the cartoon^note Cuddles, Giggles, Toothy, Petunia, Handy, Splendid, Sniffles, Flaky, and Nutty., Lumpy as the host, and a slew of other features. An update on December 15, 2023 added Flippy (and his evil side Fliqpy) to the game as a playable character.

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Tropes that apply to The Crackpet Show:

• Abnormal Ammo:
  • The crazier weapons fire crazier bullets. How about one that lobs pieces of flesh? One that shoots turrets, which in turn also shoot? A human fist?
  • Enemies also have unconventional bullet shapes for those that use ranged attacks. The octopi fire spinning pieces of tentacles, for example. Some bosses are more so to go with their themes, like Wormy Cat's bullets being fish, DJ Horse's involving music notes and stars, the Toilet Monkey (and its degraded variants) raining down traffic cones, etc.
• Achievement Mockery: A few secret achievements require the player to die to easily avoidable situations, like an easy enemy.
• Action Bomb: The hornets fly straight for the players upon spawning. The hornets explode when they are close enough to a player or if killed.
• Adaptational Badass: The guest Happy Tree Friends are more than happy to pump lead into the freaky enemies. Consider that their show of origin prohibits death by guns. Their minigame portraits also give them human-like bulky looks, including the nerd Sniffles.
  • Flaky's inclusion is notable since her cowardice would not make her willingly put herself in this situation.
  • Handy carries over his ability to hold and use weapons from Happy Tree Friends: Deadeye Derby, despite his lack of hands.
• Adaptational Wimp: On the other hand, Splendid the Superman expy is made physically weaker and has to use guns like everyone else instead of his superpowers.
• After the End: The game takes place post-apocalypse that rendered all of humanity gone and the Crackpets rise.
• Airborne Mook: Any enemy equipped with airborne transport. These can move over low obstacles and are thus unaffected by ground-bound traps.
• All There in the Manual:
  • Names for the playable characters are not mentioned in-game, but can be found on some other official source, like the Steam trading cards. Other background info are also only learned from the official news posts.
  • This is even more noticeable with the Happy Tree Friends, as their names similarly are never mentioned in-game as if the players have already been familiar with them. A player has to look up info of the show to learn about the guest characters.
• Ambiguous Gender: One of the guest Happy Tree Friends is Flaky, the resident Running Gag of Viewer Gender Confusion. Subverted in that while she still averts Tertiary Sexual Characteristics (thus the source of the confusion), her minigame portrait depicts her with a more feminine shape like Giggles and Petunia.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: The player can unlock skins of the playable characters by using the wheel of fortune at the lobby. The cards to use it, however, can only be gotten from clearing episodes in Campaign mode or defeating bosses in Endless mode.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • All traps are disabled and remaining enemy bullets no longer damage the players after a stage clear, preventing a Kaizo Trap scenario.
  • The player is required to hold a weapon while playing an episode, so if the player ends up dropping/selling all equipped weapons, the player will be automatically given their starting weapon of the respective class in the next stage.
  • When playing co-op, any dead ally will be automatically revived with one hit point if the remaining players successfully clear a stage, allowing all players to keep moving forward as a team.
  • If a Crackpet has multiple shields and one of them was gained from a perk, but he/she then loses one, then priority will be given to the shield granted from the perk, meaning as long as it was the only hit taken prior, the next stage will regenerate the shield, keeping the rest safe.
  • Since Endless Mode lacks Equipment Upgrade and pits players against a large number of enemies in a very wide room, an exclusive perk that boosts movement speed and damage output is preapplied to all players upon starting this mode. Not to mention, all weapons, items, and perks gradually grow more powerful and pickups become more frequent the more waves cleared, so players will be able to catch up to the enemies which also gradually grow stronger.
• Anvil on Head: Appears as an item that inflicts heavy damage to any enemy the player is currently aiming at.
• Art Shift: All the simplistic playable characters end up drawn in a more detailed artstyle during the Button Mashing minigame. Notably, most of the male characters tend to be depicted with considerable bulk. The change in artstyle only makes the Self-Harm more over-the-top.
• Ass Kicks You: Ass-in-Glass, the boss of Episode 12, is a seemingly disembodied butt inside a liquid-filled glass containment. Doesn't stop it from unleashing Bullet Hell and lasers upon the Crackpets. When it Turns Red, it is shown to be a mutated creature with sharp teeth.
• Ass Shove: When interacting with the upgrade goldfish to use her service, she shoves an Upgrade Coin into... some butt-like thing in the trash can.
• Asteroids Monster: The larger hugger enemies. Their smallest, basic variants do not do much except chasing the players like a zombie, but defeat a larger one and it splits into two weaker variants, and this keeps going until they are at their most basic forms, so if multiple huggers are present, a Zerg Rush is all but guaranteed. The Blind Hugger boss plays with this rule as well while also firing bullets, so Bullet Hell eventually ensues as well. At least this one (even split) does not chase after the players.
• Attack Drone: The Turret is a special item that can be deployed on the ground (or fired from the Turret Launcher). It shoots bullets at any nearby enemy in range until its timer runs out. The Tesla Turret's electricity hits near-instantly and can hit multiple enemies in range simultaneously. A different item called My Turret works the same, but copies the user's current weapon for the shots.
  • Lionstein and Lionel can deploy their own turrets like the player. Unlike the player's turrets, they can be shot and destroyed.
• Attack Reflector: The Mirror item allows the user to temporarily reflect enemy projectiles back at it.
• Attack Speed Buff: The Rapid Fire perk decreases the affected Crackpet's weapon cooldown. Other perks and items can also achieve the same effect.
• Auto-Revive: A special item with this namesake is not manually activated unlike other items. When the user loses the last hit point, this item will automatically consume a charge to revive the user with full health.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • As the game demands quick reactions, any high-damage weapon is this if it is the only thing in a player's hands, as these tend to have slow cooldowns.
  • Few powerful weapons, like the Bowling Gun, slow the player down when held. Not something to experience in a fast-paced Bullet Hell game. However, unlocking (and assigning) the ability to bring two weapons, combined with Real-Time Weapon Change, allows the player to just swap between one of these weapons and a normal one to mitigate this problem entirely.
  • Epic items are very powerful but tend to have excessively long cooldown per use.
• Big Ball of Violence: The game's logo has this behind its title.
• Body Armor as Hit Points: If a Crackpet gains a shield, either from a perk or the upgraded healing machine, the shield is added to his/her Life Meter, functioning as an additional hit point. Shields from both sources can be stacked, but only the one gained from the perk will regenerate in the next stage.
• Bones Do Not Belong There: Expect at least one Stock Femur Bone to pop out from a dead animal's corpse, usually from the (missing) head. Yes, including octopi, crabs, snails...
• Boring, but Practical:
  • Much of the common weapons are the best as a primary, since the epic ones tend to be Awesome, but Impractical. The humble Shotgun from the Tank class is the best to have for a solo player upon starting a new run thanks to its Spread Shot. This also goes for any multi-bullet weapon, as they benefit the best from perks that affect bullets. For a special mention, the chaotic Random Gun that can be a Game-Breaker? It is classified as a common weapon.
  • Episode 1 is typically the go-to for skin card grinding and fulfilling certain non-Endless achievements that are difficult if done anywhere else. Considering that speedrunning in less than five minutes is possible in this episode, it provides skin cards faster than attempting Endless.
• Boss Rush: Episode 12 has the player face every miniboss previously encountered so far. Though each fight is separated by a normal stage so it is not directly back-to-back, this leaves the player with very little options to prepare or heal outside of Stash for weapon. Episode 18 also follows the same format with the Season Three minibosses, albeit with the latter half filled with major boss fights Slime Swine, DJ Horse, and Ass-in-Glass before the Final Boss is fought.
• Bring My Brown Pants: The Stress Factor perk causes the affected Crackpet to lay down an "explosive mine" upon taking damage.
• Brown Bag Mask: What is the Invisibility item in this game? Why yes, it is a plain bag mask! It is worn over the Crackpet's head on use and it is enough to fool enemies.
• Bullet Hell: Like in Enter the Gungeon, expect to be showered with tons of bullets from multiple enemies and especially the bosses, which have more intricate shot patterns.
• Cast from Hit Points: A single use of Stimpak greatly boosts the user's weapon damage and fire rate at the cost of one hit point. And yes, the player can kill their own Crackpet by using the item while having one hit point remaining.
• Christmas Episode: Christmas 2022, when the game was still in Early Access, had Parrot wear the typical ugly Christmas sweater.
• Cocky Rooster: Rusty is one aggressive rooster. His alternate skins also emphasize his manliness. Yes, even the KFC parody skin. Heck, his official full title is even called "Cocky Rusty".
• Cognizant Limbs: The Wack-a-Ctopus fight has its tentacles fought first, each of them having its own Life Meter. Once they are taken out in this phase, the boss' head pops out and it keeps using its tentacles (still with individual health bars) for attacks. Destroying the tentacles in this phase is at least optional, though recommended considering each of them fires bullets and a couple are placed right in front of the boss' head.
• Collision Damage: In general, touching an enemy damages the player's Crackpet, but there are certain items/perks that invoke this from the player.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Enemy bullets, no matter the shape, are red to distinguish them from the players' more varied bullets. Word of God also confirmed that this design decision also extends to character designs, hence why no playable character is colored entirely red despite Amazing Technicolor Wildlife being in effect. Interestingly, Happy Tree Friends Edition adds Flaky, an entirely red character. When questioned about this, Vixa Games realized the mistake but kept her in anyway.
• Combat Resuscitation: In a multiplayer game, if an ally runs out of health, a timer appears around them that counts down to their proper death. Having a player stand over the timer will gradually fill it back and, when full, revive the downed ally with half a heart.
• Competitive Balance: The classes that decide the starting equipment are based on four playstyles:^note Note that a player is free to mix up the loadout by dropping the chosen class weapon and/or item, picking another class, then reclaiming the dropped weapon/item. If the Sponsor skill to equip two weapons is unlocked, this also allows the player to start with two weapons instead of one.
  • Assault is more focused on Attack! Attack! Attack!. The player starts off with a Pew Gun and the heavy damage-dealing Anvil Drop.
  • Engineer focuses on debilitating enemies via the Zap Gun and Damage Over Time via the Turret that the user sets on the ground.
  • Medic focuses on defensive play, with the obstacle-bypassing Lob-o-Gun and the Bandages for healing.
  • Tank focuses more on distracting multiple enemies. The user is equipped with a Shotgun that fires in a Spread Shot and a Taunt to get enemies' attention. This only matters while playing multiplayer.
• Convection, Schmonvection: Lava pools can form from players or enemies alike, but only touching them will inflict damage, and only for the opposing side. The lava does not even melt the ice terrains!
• Cooldown: Every weapon has a cooldown timer before it can be fired again. The Rapid Fire perk (and its Aura variant) helps reduce this a bit. Items also have a cooldown before they can be used again.
• Critical Hit: A shot has a chance to inflict double damage as critical hit, though there are perks that boost chance or critical hit damage. There are also Sponsor skills that increase critical hit chance further or guarantee critical hits on close range.
• Critical Status Buff: Two perks apply damage boost and firing rate if the affected Crackpet has low enough health.
• Cross-Popping Veins: One of the post-credits photos shows baby Sharky sporting this from his sand castle being destroyed by baby Panda.
• Crosshair Aware: Certain enemy attacks are preceded with crosshairs to denote their Area of Effect.
• Damage Discrimination: Averted. The spinning blades and the spike traps hurt ground-bound enemies, not just the players.
• Deadly Game: The game's premise, with the participants completely willing to join for the fame. Sure, gruesome deaths are to be expected, but anyone can just come back to life after defeat.
• Degraded Boss: A few enemies and minibosses encountered later are weaker versions of the bosses already fought. For example, the Mega Toad has the Twin Toads minibosses and the regular toad mooks. They are all enemies that move by jumping from one spot to another, inflicting Collision Damage.
  • A few do not even have to be the same species. Sludge Swine's derivatives include the minibosses Slime Koala and the Koala Duo, as well as a normal enemy that shares the same similarity: firing angular projectiles in a Spread Shot.
  • Inverted with the bats. Bats are first encountered in Season One, but the boss and miniboss versions appear in Season Two. Same for the huggers and the octopi, as both debuted in Season One, but their boss versions appear in Season Three.
• Developer's Foresight: The chicks spawned by the turkey's shots or the Egg Launcher weapon will reward no score when killed, preventing players from score grinding in Endless mode.
• Die, Chair, Die!: Fragile props such as crates and barrels can be destroyed by shots or walking over them. A Sponsor skill allows a chance of hearts, weapons, or items to appear from broken crates or barrels.
• A Dog Named "Dog": Much of the playable characters are just named after their species namesake (Crocodile, Panda, Goat) or sounding cartoony while still referencing their species (Cowie, Sharky, Piggy). Only exception is Rusty the rooster.
  • The host is an anthropomorphic parrot named... Parrot.
  • Averted with the guest Happy Tree Friends, as their established names do not follow this pattern.
• Dual Boss: Some miniboss fights have the player face two of them at the same time.
  • The Blood Brothers from Season Three are the only boss fight to be this.
• Duct Tape for Everything: The Shotgun, whose parts are assembled with duct tape. Also the description:
  Runs on duct tape and hope.
• Dung Fu: The mines that players can lay on the ground as traps are explosive poop.
• Dungeon Shop: Appears as a stage type. There, players can purchase weapons, items, perks, or hearts with Likes (potential Hilarity Ensues since all players share a wallet). Players can also interact with a shady cat to sell their currently-held weapon or with a cleaning fish (if she appears) to exchange their weapon with a random one (can only be done once per encounter). Though prices go higher the later an episode is, there are Sponsor skills that can help lower buying price or increase selling price.
• Easter Egg:
  • Idle on the lobby for long enough and the player will be greeted by a joke pop-up stating that they are the 999,999th participant and thus won something. It does not do anything when clicked, though.
  • Kill enough number of enemies (as in a lot) within a short timeframe and a photographic portrait of one of the devs will pop up on the bottom right corner of the screen.
• Easy Levels, Hard Bosses: No matter the weapon and item, a skilled player can clear out regular stages easily. Good weapons and perks help do this faster. However, bosses require the player to study their attack patterns and arena layout on-the-fly, thus it is not uncommon for players to die even on the very first boss until they have a better idea or get lucky with their loadout.
• Elite Mook: A different-colored or equipped variant of an enemy is called an Elite variant. They are more powerful than the Common variants, of course.
• Endless Game: The Endless mode pits players against endless waves of enemies, only broken up by boss fights every ten waves. Most sponsor skills and upgrades from Campaign (if the player unlocked them) do not carry over to this mode. An online leaderboard records all players' best from this mode, though this is not present in the Nintendo Switch version.
• Enemy Summoner:
  • The Junk Queen (and the miniboss version Junk Princess) spawns toy monkeys to mess with the player's aim, even more so once she Turns Red.
  • Cockroach the Builder spawns enemies throughout his boss fight.
  • The Final Boss can summon the audience members, who chase after players not unlike the huggers (complete with the same sound effect).
• Epic Fail: The player can induce this to themselves by using the Stimpak, normally an item that gives a power up at the cost of one hit point, while only having the last health piece remaining. This instantly kills their Crackpet, of course, and there is even an achievement for it!
• Equipment Upgrade:
  • Weapons, special items, and perks can be upgraded using Upgrade Coins to increase their effectiveness. What is boosted is dependent on the item being upgraded, for example most weapons gaining boost to damage per hit. Most cap at rank 3, but a few can not be upgraded at all.
  • The Upgrade stage rewards players with the opportunity to upgrade their weapons for the current run. This is the only way to use Rank 4 weapons.
• Everything's Better with Rainbows: The Rainbow Shotgun, which lobs three rainbow bullets.
• Excuse Plot: Join a Deadly Game TV show, fighting other mutants to the death! For fame!
• Experience Booster: Taking the Fame Booster Power-Up increases Fame earned in the next few stages.
• Experience Points: Fame basically functions as this, as it is counted from enemies/minibosses/bosses killed plus some obtained in Fame rooms and counted from remaining Likes. This fills a bar that, when full, gives players an Upgrade Coin for weapon/item/perk upgrades.
• Eye Scream: Animals losing eyes as part of their death animations are commonplace, but special mention goes to the minigame's Self-Harm portraits:
  • Sharky pokes both of his eyes, making them gush blood.
  • Panda impales his eye with a bamboo.
  • Flaky pokes her face, including one of her eyes, with her quills.
  • Sniffles has one of his pens stuck in his eye.
• Eyes Do Not Belong There: The Mega Toad and its Mini-Boss variants have an extra eye on their vocal sac.
• Fartillery: Usable via a special item aptly named Fart, which unleashes an Area of Effect attack.
• Fat Bastard: Body-Positive Hamster and his derivatives. They are all obese hamsters sitting on rocket-powered seats.
• Final Boss: The Host Parrot himself.
• Flipping the Bird:
  • Bunny is depicted flipping the middle finger on his official artwork. This seems to be his schtick, as his sprite's hand always shows a middle finger and the post-credits image shows a photo of him doing just that while running away from a pissed off Crocodile.
  • The rat enemies are equipped with a hand-shaped contraption which points with a middle finger. Appropriately, the image for the achievement "Well, that was impressive", which is earned from dying to a rat enemy, depicts the contraption with the middle finger pixelated.
  • It is hard to see, but the rat shamans' Death from Above attack consists of a rain of hands with a middle finger pointing out.
  • Cockroach the Builder flips off the player on his episode thumbnail and boss splash.
  • The mouse cursor on the PC version points with a middle finger.
• French Maid Outfit: Piggy, of all characters, gets a maid outfit skin.
• Friendly Fireproof: No one's shots can hurt each other of the same side.
• Game-Breaking Bug: The game was prone to crashing for various reasons, but updates tend to fix this.
• Goofy Print Underwear: Parrot's full body shows him wearing these.
• The Goomba: The rats are the most basic enemies in the game. They are also the easiest to defeat, as their only behavior is chase after players to attack them at close-range with a pointy finger contraption, in contrast with most enemies' ranged bullet shots. However, after an update, the rats spread bullets upon defeat, so they are not as easy to completely dismiss. Since then, this role went to the penguins, even though they use ranged attacks, but their bullets are easy to dodge because of their basic patterns.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: If either of the Blood Brothers is killed first, the surviving one that Turns Red may kick the dead brother's corpse towards a player as an attack.
• Groin Attack: Rusty's Self-Harm during the Button Mashing minigame is supposed to invoke this trope as Visual Pun. Here, he squeezes his testicle-shaped wattles and he cries in pain.
• Grossout Show: The game uses a grotesque artstyle that would not be out of place in a 90's violent cartoon and is not afraid to display all sorts of Body Horror for the boss designs (ex. Wormy Cat is a gigantic cat with monstrous worms on its back). The game also utilizes Toilet Humor both from the player characters (via certain perks) and certain enemies, like the skunk enemy that lobs bullets from its butt hole.
• Guest Fighter: Cuddles, Giggles, Flaky, Toothy, Nutty, Petunia, Handy, Sniffles, and Splendid from Happy Tree Friends are playable in the Happy Tree Friends Edition update. Flippy eventually joined in since the December 15, 2023 update.
• Guide Dang It!: Some of the secret achievements are only recognized once the player unlocks them, and they are typically stuff that either happen by accident or something players are very unlikely to perform. That is, if the player does not look for a guide.
  • "Fashionista" has the bizarre requirement of a player having a certain perk applied and then the same player using a particular special item. Good luck knowing which ones without a guide.
• Happily Married: The post-credits screen has a photo of Piggy married to a female pig who is just as grotesque as himself.
• Heal Thyself:
  • Most healing items only affect the user, though the Medkit has an Area of Effect and the Heal-o-Tron 5000 instead deploys a healing station that can be used by any player, not just the user.
  • The Final Boss has a move where he stands still and heals himself... by readjusting his makeup. This can be interrupted by the players, though.
• Hearts Are Health: Hearts are the players' healing item and Life Meter.
• Homing Projectile: The Homing Bullets perk adds this effect to the affected Crackpet's shots, allowing the bullets to hit enemies easier. On the enemy side, the Elite penguins' single shots subtly home in on the nearest player and DJ Horse has an attack where the star-shaped bullets follow the player.
• In Name Only: Happy Tree Friends Edition has little to do with the titular show aside from the inclusion of its characters and their deaths referencing ones from the show as well. The playable characters are just additional player pieces that play exactly the same anyway and Lumpy the presenter does not even replace the final boss.
• Informed Species:
  • The Koala Duo minibosses are modeled more after a black bear and a brown bear than a koala, complete with honey.
  • Wack-a-Ctopus looks more like a squid than an octopus.
• Interface Screw: Later waves of Endless Mode are prone to heavy lagging due to the extremely high bullet density from the many strong enemies that appear.
• Joke Weapon: The Golden Gun. It only inflicts a minuscule 5 damage per hit and can not be upgraded.
• Knockback: The Knockback perk makes every shot push its target back. Does not work on bosses, however.
• Life Meter: Players have hearts, while enemies have the standard health bar. Every damage taken by a player takes off half a heart, while enemies have numerical health that is shaved off by damage numbers inflicted by the players' weapons/items or traps.
• Limited Loadout: A player starts off only being able to equip one weapon and one item, forcing swaps for every new weapon/item found that may or may not benefit the player in the current run. A Sponsor skill allows the player to equip two weapons, but it remains a decision-making game because it is still a very tight inventory and there are plenty of good weapons or items to use.
• Limited Sound Effects: Every enemy with a jump attack will also share the same croaking sound from the toad enemies when performing that attack.
• Luck-Based Mission: A given due to the game's roguelite gameplay, but the most noticeable example is accessing the secret room. It rarely appears in any stage in an episode, but even then only certain room layouts make this possible. There is no telling which stage has it unless the player inspects every front-facing wall.
• Mad Scientist: Lionstein, the Episode 11 boss, is a lion in a typical labcoat and named after Albert Einstein. The same also applies to his miniboss version, Lionel.
• Mercy Invincibility: Applies to player characters upon taking any damage.
• Mini-Boss: Starting from Episode 4, the player can encounter a miniboss fight midway through an episode. The minibosses are of the Degraded Boss variety.
• Mook Maker: The turkey enemies lob bullets that spawn malformed chicks that crawl toward the players, the same side effect as the Egg Launcher weapon.
• Mook Medic:
  • The necromancer can revive a defeated enemy to half health if it is close to the corpse.
  • The dog healer does nothing but heal a random enemy.
• More Dakka: Pretty much expected as it is a Bullet Hell game. Some of the weapons fire multiple bullets, and this can escalate with the Extra Shot perk, which makes the user fire twice in a single click.
• Ms. Fanservice: Cowie the cow is supposed to invoke this for laughs. The intro and the post-credits Campaign clear screen have individual shots focused on her udders. In the latter, she is even seen on the group photo posing like for a pin-up photoshoot.
• Mythology Gag: The Happy Tree Friends' death animations reference the deaths from the show, down to the graphics. For example, Cuddles ends up with a shredded face from "This Is Your Knife".
• Nitro Boost: The Haste perk increases the affected player's movement speed. Adrenaline Shot also has the same effect (among other boosts), but only for a few seconds after starting a stage.
• No-Damage Run: The achievement "Flawless" requires winning a boss fight without getting hit, while "Flawless Victory" requires completing a run without getting hit.
• Not Completely Useless: Golden Gun is a Joke Weapon as mentioned above, but bring it to a shop and it sells for a lot of Likes. In later episodes, it can be sold for four-digit Likes.
• Pacifist Run: In the sense of not firing weapons or using offense-based special items, the "Pacifist" achievement requires the player to pull this off in a stage, meaning enemies can only be killed by non-weapon perk effects or stage traps.
• Palette Swap: Stronger variants of an enemy are colored differently or given different graphical assets to distinguish them from each other.
• Personal Space Invader:
  • The spider enemies shoot their threads that cover a decent range. If a player is caught in one, they will be pulled towards the spider, causing Collision Damage unless said spider is killed or the player dashes out of the thread.
  • The Final Boss has a very long-ranged grab move among his variety of attacks.
• Pixel Hunt: As shown on one of Vixa Games' YouTube Shorts, there exists a secret room in a run and the video shows how to find it, but the switch to open it can easily blend with the detailed environment, only noticeable if the player happens to be close enough for it to lit up as interactive.
• Playboy Bunny: One of the alternate skins for, well, Bunny.
• Power-Up: Boost stages will reward players with a drinking fountain (in the form of a gigantic canned drink) that will boost either Fame obtained, Likes obtained, or damage output for the next few stages.
• Purple Is Powerful: Epic weapons/items are distinguished from the common ones by their purple glow.
• Random Drops: If a stage rewards something, like say, a weapon, whatever the player gets is random. And since the player can only equip up to two weapons and one item, decisions for a run are vital.
• Random Effect Spell: The Random Gun fires a shot from any other weapon picked at random per shot, provided the weapon has been unlocked. Yes, even with the Extra Shot perk, the second shot tends to be different.
• Random Loot Exchanger: The cleaning fish that can be occasionally found in the shop stages will exchange a player's currently-held weapon with a random one once per encounter, though most of the time it ends up as one of the starting weapons.
• Random Number God: Being a roguelite game, it is a given. Not just in stage progression (and this is not even touching Endless mode), but also unlocking skins and upgrading weapons/items/perks. To elaborate on the latter, the player is given two random things to upgrade. Once one is picked, it moves on to the next two random items and the player repeats the process until the player runs out of Upgrade Coins or upgradeable stuff. A stage's type can also be a "Random" one, so it can play out as any other stage type picked, well, randomly.
• Randomly Generated Levels: An episode has randomly generated stages arranged in paths that may randomly branch out or cross with another, while every normal stage randomly picks one of the preset layouts in most cases and every stage type is decided randomly upon an episode run, so no run is the same.
• Real-Time Weapon Change: Once the player has unlocked the Sponsor ability to bring two weapons at once, they may switch between them instantly with a dedicated button.
• Self-Harm: If two or more players try to claim the same perk, they will be subjected to a Button Mashing game which involves an Art Shift and over-the-top self-injury. These range from Goat pulling the skin of his face, to Cowie slapping herself enough to spray blood from her nose, to Bunny pulling his own ears to the point of tearing his scalp apart and exposing his brain.
• Set a Mook to Kill a Mook: The Meat Boys perk allows the player to randomly pull this off. Upon an enemy's death by the player with this perk, it may be reanimated into a zombie ally that fights for the perk user.
• Shaped Like Itself: Cowie the cow has a cow alternate skin. It is a classic black-and-white cow costume worn over her body.
• Shirtless Scene: Flippy, a Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal, is drawn without his uniform during the Button Mashing minigame, showcasing his large bulk in full view.
• Shout-Out: The game is constantly promoted as being inspired by Happy Tree Friends — it was even advertised on the show's subreddit. It does employ other gory cartoon tropes and parody certain aspects from the Turn of the Millennium (see Easter Egg above), though. For specific examples:
  • Bunny is the closest in design to being inspired by Happy Tree Friends. Like Cuddles, he is a male rabbit with a soft coloration (the pink coloring even closer to Toothy's light purple). His crazed, different-colored eyes seem to be a inspired from Nutty, who also has a similar eye design. His voice mostly consists of high-pitched cheery or crazed laughs which would not be out of place in Happy Tree Friends.
  • One of Crocodile's skins consists of blue sailor hat and uniform with a red bow tie on the collar.
  • Speaking of Disney reference, Crocodile also has a Minnie Mouse skin, consisting of a large hair bow and skirt colored red with white polka dots.
  • Another Crocodile skin recolors her purple and orange-ish yellow and gives her two curved orange horns.
  • Panda's starting alt skins are based on Admiral Bahroo's pandas, Umeru and rooG.
  • Epix Mole gains Super Saiyan hair when he Turns Red.
  • The minibosses Twin Toads are named Mary and Ashley.
  • DJ Horse is actually an ape wearing a horse mask, seemingly referencing the horse mask meme from late into Turn of the Millennium and early into The New '10s, but Word of God stated that it is based on their art developer's Halloween costume.
  • Emo Hedgehog may be this to the Sonic the Hedgehog fandom, one of the fandoms famous for the "edgy" fan characters.
  • The Blood Brothers are both buff and they are named Arnold and Sylvester.
  • Cockroach the Builder appears to be a reference to Bob the Builder, going by the name, the boss' construction theme, episode title ("Can We Fix It?"), and achievement name ("Can't fix this").
  • There is a weapon called Doom Gun. It fires a slow but powerful projectile. And to quote the game:
    May contain traces of copyright infringement.
  • A Cartoon Bomb item is called Bomberman. It even functions similarly to the bombs in that game.
  • Sometimes, the screen on the Sponsors machine shows a Nyan Cat spoof albeit with a tiny pig in its place.
  • The achievement for killing 1,000 enemies is called "Rambo".
  • Terminator references:
    • One of Panda's skins has parts of his skin missing, exposing robotic insides.
    • One of Piggy's skins makes him resemble a Toy animatronic (it even mentions "freddy" in its file name), though the main idea is lifted from Terminator according to the Skin Inspirations news post.
    • One of the epic items temporarily binds the user on one spot in exchange for complete invincibility and near-instant firing rate. It is called Terminator.
  • Surprisingly, Vixa Games were not aware of Smash TV when it was brought up by a Reddit user, considering the similar premise of both games which would warrant this trope, averting it instead.
• Skill Scores and Perks: The Sponsors and the Perks, the former unlocked using Trophies obtained from clearing episodes while the latter appears at the start of an episode or on stages with the goldfish icon (if not as a potential outcome in a Random stage).
  • Sponsors unlock new features and gameplay enhancements to ease some of the difficulty, though players still have a choice to unassign them if they wish.
  • Perks are temporary power-ups applied on the player receiving them. It only applies for the current run and will be gone on the next run. These can be upgraded in the lobby with Upgrade Coins. There is also the Mutation Potion item that can be used to temporarily apply five random perks on the user. Interestingly, though a given perk can only be claimed by one player, if more than one player decide to claim the same perk, they will be subjected to a button press minigame where the first one to mash 10 correct buttons in a row wins the perk.
• Speedrun Reward: The achievement "Speedrunner" requires clearing any episode within 5 minutes. "All Mighty" is this for an Endless stage (the 10-wave stage, NOT the boss stage), with the requirement of less than 2 minutes.
• Spoiler Opening: Booting Happy Tree Friends Edition for the first time will play a snippet of the tie-in Happy Tree Friends short "Too Much Scream Time". Said snippet is from the last third of the short, so players that start the DLC first before watching the full short (like everyone during the initial launch; the full short came out 6 hours after the DLC) will have Cuddles'^note This one is already shown on the trailers, though., Disco Bear's, and Pop's death spoiled.
• Spoonerism: The Gerf Nun weapon.
• Starter Equipment: The class weapons and items. They are typically the most basic for the given class' playstyle and have no significant advantage and drawback. For example, the damage-focused Assault has the Pew Gun and the Anvil Drop, which fulfil their basic purpose of just doing damage, no other effects.
• Stationary Boss: Ass-in-Glass, Wack-a-Ctopus, and Cockroach the Builder do not move from their spots in their fights.
• Status Effects:
  • Poison inflicts Damage Over Time to the affected enemy.
  • Glue/Stun stops the affected enemy temporarily.
  • Freeze slows down the affected enemy.
  • Marked is a Damage-Increasing Debuff on the affected enemy. Only one enemy in a stage can be affected at a time.
• Tertiary Sexual Characteristics:
  • Crocodile, one of the two playable female characters, wears a pink bow and has long eyelashes. The group victory photo after clearing the game also shows her in a bikini.
  • The goldfish that upgrades the player's weapons/items/perks has a pink bow attached to her glass helmet and short eyelashes.
  • The female pig on a post-credits photo is basically Piggy with eyelashes and a flower on her head.
  • The Happy Tree Friends side has the pink Giggles wearing a red bow on her head and the flower-adorned Petunia. Both are also distinguished by their long eyelashes.
• Themed Cursor: The Windows version has the mouse cursor in the form of a white glove hand pointing with a middle finger.
• Timed Mission: The Fame and Social stages require the players to defeat all enemies as quickly as possible to earn bonus Fame and Likes respectively. The faster it is cleared, the more Fame/Likes are rewarded.
• Timed Power-Up: Special items that linger around on use will only last up to a set time limit depending on the item type and rank.
• Title Theme Drop: The title screen theme is played during the Final Boss fight.
• Too Awesome to Use: No thanks to the one-item limit per player. A player may hold on to an item until a critical situation calls for it, or if they are in a boss fight. This holds true for the epic items, since there are plenty of options and they tend to be downright Game-Breaker for normal stage use.
• Too Dumb to Live: Ground-bound enemies do not care if they walk over or stay on a spinning blades' path or spike traps, which damage them like the player characters.
• The Tooth Hurts: Toothy's Self-Harm in the Button Mashing minigame involves him biting down on a stone, breaking his teeth.
• Toothy Bird: Rusty the rooster's always-grimacing expression shows his beak full of teeth.
• Top-Down View: The game is presented this way.
• Tornado Move: The Tornado item temporarily turns the user into one to inflict Collision Damage.
• Turns Red: Most bosses transform into a more aggressive state when their health goes under 50%. The following bosses are the exceptions/subversions:
  • The Blind Hugger does not have a second phase at all, but its Asteroids Monster nature means that the more of it is remaining alive, the more Bullet Hell the fight goes.
  • Wack-a-Ctopus is not fought as itself until all its tentacles are defeated in the first phase.
  • The Blood Brothers, being a Dual Boss fight, have this happen if one of them is killed, causing the other to go aggressive.
• Turtle Power: There is a boss called Giant Turtle, which is, well, a giant turtle. Aside from firing bullets, it can also stomp to unleash shockwaves (also represented by bullets).
• Unnecessary Combat Roll: Averted, as dashing is necessary to avoid bullets, enemies, or traps that might be too fast to outrun or just plain in the way. Pits also cannot be passed through without dashing, which is already made clear in the tutorial.
• Video Game Caring Potential: As fun as it is to shoot the apathetic audience members, there is an achievement for not shooting any of them in a single episode.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: The audience members can be killed by the players' own shots. There is even an achievement for killing 999 of them.
• Video Game Tutorial: Playing Campaign on a fresh save will have the player go through a tutorial stage as Bunny (or Cuddles in the "HTF theme") to get used to the controls and game mechanics.
• Visual Pun: Rusty's wattles are drawn like ballsacks. The other name for Rusty's species is "cock."
• Vocal Dissonance: Flippy uses his evil side's voice upon stepping out from the character selection pod, even if the chosen skin is his default normal one.
• Voice Grunting: The Crackpets let out animalistic sounds upon leaving their character select pods, except for Bunny, who laughs like a typical cartoon character. The Happy Tree Friends use samples from their voice actors. In actual gameplay, however, they all share the same high-pitched voice.
• Wake-Up Call Boss: Epix Mole's fight truly hammers in the different bullet types and the need to dash. His straight bullets upon emerging from the ground have a predictable pattern and can be cancelled out by hiding behind one of the two low walls, but after that he uses the lob-type bullets in a large amount, meaning the low walls will not save the players. When he goes back underground, a large amount of bullets appear out of nowhere before moving in a straight line, each to a random direction, which can tip players off. Then, when he Turns Red, among the lobbed bullets are ones that create lava pools that damage players walking over them. These are lobbed depending on player position, so hugging the edges of the arena is a quick ticket to getting stuck and taking unavoidable damage. And how to get past the lava pools safely? Dash. All the episodes after this will only ramp up the difficulty further.
• Warm-Up Boss: The Mega Toad is the first boss the player faces without having to go to the lobby, as Episode 1 is played immediately after the tutorial.
• Weird Currency: Likes (like Facebook's Likes) are this game's currency, obtained from killing enemies, as bonus from clearing a Social stage, or selling a currently held weapon. Of course, these are mainly used in the shop stages.
• Whack-a-Monster:
  • The worms only pop out from a random spot on the ground to fire their weapons before hiding back in to repeat the process.
  • Epix Mole, Mole in the Hole, and Mole Mole pop out of the ground to attack before hiding, just like the worms.
• A Winner Is You: Completing Campaign mode immediately throws the player into a credits roll and then a "Congratulations!" screen.
• World of Funny Animals: This game takes place After the End, so no humans are seen, only the Crackpets. Note that most of the Crackpets are anthropomorphic animals in one way or another, from the typical anthropomorphic rabbit to a shark on land to weaponized worms, but some retain their real-life animal postures like the crabs and the snails, and some others, like most bosses, are designed as monstrous.
• X-Ray Sparks:
  • Every time a player receives a perk. Regardless of the Crackpet's species, they all show human-like skeletons underneath. The skeleton is always a full-body shape as well, meaning that the handless Handy ends up having hands just for that moment.
  • Lionstein and Lionel get subjected to this during one of their attacks.
• Zerg Rush: The large number of enemies will easily overwhelm players if not killed quickly. The player can also invoke this using the Manifesto, which summons 7-13 maniacs (depending on the item's rank) from the audience to fight enemies. As a bonus, the enemies' attention also turns toward them instead of the player if they are nearest.

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