YMMV / The Crackpet Show

• Audience-Alienating Premise: The combination of the dated premise of zany cartoon animals violently and graphically murdering each other and oversaturation of the Roguelike genre in the indie gaming market really put this game into niche status. To use an example from its Nintendo Life article comment section, the mere mention of the genre put off most gamers and the premise of a cartoony but gory video game with crude humor is easily dismissed as outdated, needlessly edgy, and unfunny (something that its inspiration Happy Tree Friends is also guilty of).
  • One factor that does not help matters is their aggressive marketing. The game is advertised on various general gaming subreddits, which may be sensible for an indie game, but few cases like Vixa Games posting fan art to congratulate Cult of the Lamb on its subreddit is seen as bad faith as it looked more like a self-promotion. On YouTube, the game is also advertised through sponsors, causing a few YouTubers to pull an Enforced Plug by making a video or two about The Crackpet Show, all going with a similar script including the mention of "Jerome Rossen the Happy Tree Friends composer" trivia, which more aware viewers found jarring. It was bad enough that one user went into Vixa Games' Discord server and accused them of manipulating the game's promotion and ratings. Vixa Games denied this, but whether they were genuine about it or just trying to cover up through PR speak is unclear.
  • Related to the above, this even alienated Happy Tree Friends fans themselves, especially ones not into gaming if not just The Crackpet Show itself, after the release of the tie-in short "Too Much Scream Time" whose The Crackpet Show involvement is as subtle as a sledgehammer to the face. Fans that dislike the short consider it a blatant advertisement for The Crackpet Show instead of HTF's proper return, not helped by its short length (which means more focus on the advertisement), weaker animation (though not to the unnatural-looking levels as in the Happy Tree Friends: Still Alive collection), Limited Sound Effects and Recycled Soundtrack galore, and They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot.
  • It says something that when the Happy Tree Friends Edition was announced, the only ones genuinely excited about it are the cartoon's (also niche) fanbase. Most other reactions range from utter confusion to highly negative, which also really speaks how relevant the cartoon really is.
• Breather Level: The players can invoke this themselves by assigning a Loan Sharks sponsor that makes any non-boss and non-shop stage have a chance to only spawn three harmless training dummies instead of enemies. Be wary that traps (if there is any) still remain dangerous, though.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: It is not uncommon for Endless players to rely on special items and/or prioritize perks that support health recovery, befitting the mode's goal of clearing as many stages as possible, which demands a long-term survival over firepower.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • Of course, the mere premise itself. The players willingly participate in a Deadly Game, and the world is in post-apocalyptic ruin. Pretty typical dystopian theme. The reason for that? Fame! Seriously, the audience loves the participants for killing. Likes are rewarded for every kill and they are also the players' currency! Oh, and the audience can also be gibbed and none of them will care.
  • Ugly Cute animals massacring each other with wacky and crude weapons is one thing, but doing that while dressed as Playboy Bunny or in a French Maid Outfit? Utter hilarity. Then there are other sources of Black Comedy like turkeys (with eating utensils stuck on them, by the way) weaponizing their young, the mere existence of Body-Positive Hamster, and the fact that one of the bosses is a literal ass (and not the donkey kind).
• Dancing Bear: If Just Here for Godzilla applies to the Happy Tree Friends fans, then this applies to other people not from the fandom. This game is pretty much more well known for being inspired by the cartoon (even featuring the cartoon's composer for the soundtrack!), and eventually the inclusion of said cartoon's characters via paid Downloadable Content. The game as it is is barely talked about in gaming circles. Even in roguelite conversations, this game is barely if never brought up. When even the lesser-received, Hype Backlash-causing roguelite AK-xolotl (released after Crackpet) can be a topic, it really makes one think.
• Demonic Spiders: These enemies can make players' life hell before they can even get to a boss.
  • The Elite crabs' chain guns fire in a three-way Spread Shot. Keep in mind that a crab's shot is preceded with a laser sight, and said shot consists of a fast barrage of bullets fired in a straight line and covering a long range. Now multiply it by three. If a stage has no walls to hide behind, then a well-timed dash is the only hope. Oh, it is possible for a stage to spawn more than one Elite crab. Imagine a dozen laser sights covering up the map...
  • The turbo snails are slow, but very durable and their method of attack is a very quick Dash Attack towards a player, leaving a fiery trail that lasts for a while. After the attack, they briefly hide in their shells to block all damage. If there are many of them in a stage, expect difficulty navigating because of their trails.
  • The Elite canaries, when there are many of them, are a recipe for easy bewilderment. The canaries' attacks are preceded with a red line denoting their (very fast) bullet range, but the Elite variant's bullets bounce off walls, so having many of them will fill much of the space with red that a player only has a second to dodge the traveling bullets. And this is before dealing with other enemies nearby for bonus claustrophobia.
• Friendly Fandoms: Even before the DLC, Happy Tree Friends fans can be chill with The Crackpet Show fans, considering the obvious shared interest. The latter easily welcomes the former as well thanks to Vixa Games' passion in trying to promote HTF back into mainstream.
• Game-Breaker: Though the game relies on pure skill and luck, the following items only make the whole Bullet Hell a breeze if not less frustrating, if the player is lucky enough to get them in a run.
  • Most epic weapons are Awesome, but Impractical due to their long cooldowns or some other catch, but the Sponsor ability to equip two weapons allows one to keep up the DPS by pairing it with a faster weapon, helped by the instant Real-Time Weapon Change, and this is before taking account of perks or special items that affect fire rate.
  • Love Spreader fires 12 bullets in a heart-shaped pattern, the most bullets per shot among all obtainable weapons. Its cooldown is slow like most other epic weapons, but still decent enough to contribute DPS and can be mitigated with the right perks. Now, consider the massive amount of bullets, and combine it with Extra Shot or Split Bullet, especially the latter.
  • The Random Gun is a Random Effect Spell put into a dice-shaped gun, which would seem risky. However, it fires any bullet type from any other (unlocked) weapon in the game per shot, including the aforementioned epic weapons. The cooldown between shots is consistent too and is in fact the stat that is upgraded, so the user is free to gamble away the shots every half second. Pair this with My Turret, which copies the user's weapon, and watch the fun.
  • The Extra Shot perk. It makes the player fire two bullets in one click. Might not seem like much for lesser weapons and does not work for ray-based weapons, but epic weapons have the best advantage for this, allowing potentially massive damage in a single click. The aforementioned Random Gun gains additional chaos as the second shot is likely never to copy the first.
  • The Short Circuit perk. If a bullet hits a target, an obstacle, or maximum range, it unleashes electricity that zaps nearby enemies. This bypasses obstacles including walls. With a Spread Shot weapon, this perk is a perfect room-clearer.
  • The Split Bullet perk. Same as Short Circuit, but the effect is splitting the bullet into two generic ones. Normally each split bullet inflicts only a fraction of the original bullet's damage. But at max rank, the split bullets inflict full damage. Use this with a multi-bullet weapon, and it can easily shred bosses' health. Combine it with the Extra Shot perk for even more damage.
  • For a non-item example, the Stash room type. Once it is unlocked through enabling its corresponding Sponsor, an episode will generate at least one such stage somewhere on the progression map. It is an enemy-free stage where players can store a copy of their currently-held weapon for use in a next run. Considering the game's roguelite nature, this is very much a boon, especially if used for weapons that already fell into this trope. A player can just try to find such weapon in an easier episode, stash it (if lucky enough to reach it after getting that weapon), then go to a harder episode and claim the stashed weapon at the starting room to begin the episode with it without having to wait for RNG. Repeat the cycle by finding another Stash stage in said run and storing the same weapon there, if the player is lucky. As for the Stash room itself, its many crates and barrels can be broken for a small chance of pickups (if the corresponding Sponsors were assigned), typically Hearts, making this room useful for healing as well. Oh, and a secret room can also be accessed from a Stash room if the player is blessed with more luck.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: If Vixa Games' Discord is of any indication, it has loads of Russian fans. A few other countries like Brazil even outnumber the fans from Poland, this game's country of origin.
• Goddamned Bats: Basically any enemy in large amounts can become pure annoyance this way, but a few stand out.
  • The worms pop out to lob bullets before they hide underground and then repeat the cycle. This makes killing them time-consuming as they are only vulnerable when above ground. Oh, and if the player is not careful, it is also possible to run into them just as they pop out. The Elite variant, meanwhile, creates lava pools from the bullet shots, making it even more annoying to approach. They are typically the last ones to go down in a stage.
  • The non-basic huggers are Asteroids Monsters. Kill one, and two weaker ones spawn from it. Repeat until they are at their weakest forms. If the player does not have a weapon/item that can clear out crowds, these gummy bears can overwhelm easily. And that is assuming no other enemies are present.
  • The blind squirrels move fast and thus hard to hit even in close range. The Elite variant adds another annoyance by being able to leap onto a player's position to attack.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • After the Manifesto item was introduced, a hilarious bug was discovered where the maniacs summoned from the item could keep attacking a boss even after it was dead. Though immortalized in GIFs, this bug was sadly patched.
  • Defeating a boss through massive damage and thus bypassing its second phase causes its death to not play out properly. It is defeated, and the player can claim the rewards it dropped, but its Life Meter is still present (and not empty) and no Fame is earned from this fight as the game treats it as if it were not defeated. Still makes a funny or awkward moment, though, typically against Mega Toad, the first and thus weakest boss.
• Hype Backlash:
  • The indirect result of the game's aggressive marketing. Uninterested people see the game as mediocre and having no reason to be pushed so insistently on social media, suspecting any praise for the game as biased or botted. They also see the pandering to Happy Tree Friends viewers as pointless as the cartoon is considered ancient and irrelevant at the time the promotion was ongoing.
  • Among HTF fans, Flippy haters are disgusted that he was added to the game. This is not helped by the poll that decided this pitting him against the less popular but still better-received characters Lifty, Disco Bear, and Mime, leaving the results a Foregone Conclusion.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Of course, Happy Tree Friends fans were quickly drawn into this game the moment its crossover Downloadable Content was announced, never mind how Nintendo Hard the game is and the fanbase back then was more neutral about the vanilla game. Justified as the fanbase has been starving for new official HTF content for about 7 years since the failure of Happy Tree Friends: Still Alive.
  • Even among the above, there are those that are only interested in the game if certain characters are in it. Flippy fans finally got thrown the bone when a free update finally added him.
• Most Wonderful Sound: The splatter sound from a boss' or miniboss' defeat can be very cathartic, especially if it is That One Boss.
• Nintendo Hard: The game demands that the player learns every enemy encountered on-the-fly and makes use of anything given by the game in a single run, as outside of Stash for weapons, everything the player (randomly) obtains vanishes after an episode fail/clear, meaning they can not play one episode the exact same way. A stage can have loads of varied enemies that can easily block off players with their bullets or Collision Damage if they are not dispatched quickly. Bosses, even the first one, already employs Bullet Hell, and some are even surrounded by traps, so careless dashing will not save the player here. While every weapon, item, or perk can be upgraded to reduce the frustration factor, player movement and timing (and luck) are still key to survival.
• Older Than They Think: An example pulled by the developers and even MondoMedia themselves. The way the Happy Tree Friends Edition is promoted is as if it would be the cartoon's first foray into gaming (with an official TikTok account even named @happytreefriendsthegame), despite the show's history with Flash, Java, smartphones, and even an Xbox LIVE entry. Whether this was a mistake or not remains to be seen, considering that The Crackpet Show website appears to use fan renders from (now-infamous) Fandom VIP Nemao, implying that Vixa Games are not aware of the cartoon's full history and fanbase.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The game does not support online multiplayer, only local, so if the player has no friends close by, multiplayer will not be possible, thus losing out on the multiplayer-only achievements and preventing 100% Completion. There is a way (or rather close enough to) to play online multiplayer on Steam, but only doable through Remote Play.
  • A player will be unable to fire their weapon if they are standing close enough to a dropped weapon/item due to the pick up command taking higher priority, potentially messing up their intended actions. This is more jarring on a mouse-and-keyboard configuration, since firing and interacting are on separate keys.
  • There is no way to sell special items, despite these items having buying price like the weapons.
• Self-Imposed Challenge:
  • The intended way to defeat Cockroach the Builder is by using the turrets on his boss arena, but some players can still choose to unload upon him like any other boss. It is slow considering his massive health, but it can be done.
  • If the player is good at it and just wants to clear an episode quickly (usually for Fame or Trophy grinding), a Minimalist Run where the player does not pick up anything is doable. There is even an achievement for it.
  • No Casualties Run, if the player wants to go for the achievement, is encouraged but not imposed very strictly. The only requirement is that the player not attack the audience members, while stray enemy bullets will not count towards the penalty. Not to say it is easy either, depending on the audience placement every stage and the player's loadout and perks.
• Spiritual Successor:
  • To quote Jerome Rossen, who composed the soundtrack for Happy Tree Friends and this game:
  "...In a way, it picks up where the Happy Tree Friends left off!"
  • For arcade shooter fans, they considered this game as the closest to a modern-day Smash TV.
• That One Achievement: "Endless conservatist", which as of September 2023 has 0.9% of Steam players acquiring it. It requires the player to clear 30 waves in Endless mode using only class weapons. Have fun holding back on using the better weapons for a long while (even through bosses!). Picking the Tank class, which gives the Shotgun, seems to be the best strategy due to its Spread Shot, but damage is still rather weak and the sight of every new weapon dropped is pretty much tempting for players to switch it out. And remember, most Sponsors and upgrades from Campaign do not apply in Endless, and the useful perks to cover up the class weapon's weaknesses are not as accessible as in Campaign.
• That One Boss: These bosses can be easy show-stoppers especially in Endless mode.
  • Body-Positive Hamster for the dash-mandatory, claustrophobic room layout. The middle area features fast spinning blades to discourage players moving around there. Dashing is mandatory because the corners have pits surrounding them, making navigation clunky. Then there is the boss itself, which is airborne, so it is not affected by all these ground-bound inconveniences. One of its attacks involves spread-firing triangles that bounce off walls, which are hard to dodge in this kind of layout. When it Turns Red, it mixes things up with a spiral shot of bullets, which it can also do while firing those triangles.
  • Junk Queen, for her ever-annoying toy monkeys she summons. Her own bullet patterns are not that hard to dodge, but defeating her can take longer than expected when the toy monkeys get in the way. These minions are deceptively durable, and it is not surprising that they can go down after the boss herself dies (and yes, a Kaizo Trap scenario is possible here since the stage is technically not cleared yet). When the Junk Queen Turns Red, she summons more of these things.
  • Ass-in-Glass, the last boss of Season Two. Its attacks are elaborate but easily telegraphed, but it makes the timing for dashing very important since its laser attacks can only be avoided this way. However, when it Turns Red, it mixes in extra bullet shots and some Death from Above for good measure while still keeping the telegraphed attacks, which make dodging harder.
  • Wack-a-Ctopus. Its first phase has the players destroy its tentacles first. These appear one by one and each shoots bullets, so if they can not take them down quickly, the screen can be easily filled with bullets. The second phase is against the octopus itself, which is a chaotic mess of bullet sprays that can easily corner players. Not helping matters is that two of the tentacles are placed right in front of its head, so it is even more time-consuming to defeat.
  • Cockroach the Builder for the sheer concentration needed to defeat him. He is a Stationary Boss surrounded by six turrets. All attacks barely chip off his health, so the turrets are the only optimal option. Players have to activate them by standing near them, and once all turrets are activated, they inflict significant damage to Cockroach. Repeat two more times. This would not be a problem except Cockroach constantly spreads bullets with gaps too little to navigate through, and there are enemies thrown in too. Players will learn to hate the rats and the hornets more since they unleash bullets upon defeat and explode near a player respectively to further distract players. To make it worse, when Cockroach Turns Red, his Death from Above attacks leave lava puddles, often over inactive turrets. And for extra frustration, an active turret will not stay up forever, forcing players to rush. Woe betide players playing solo. Fun fact: During the game's early days, the boss used to take more turret blasts before it was trimmed to three. That is how bad this boss is.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: The Happy Tree Friends Edition could have done better. All the guest characters^note Except Flippy, but his only alternate skin is his Fliqpy self, so it still does not matter. lack alternate skins and they are no different from the Crackpets. The use of Lumpy as the host while in the "HTF theme" is a neat idea, but the DLC does not do anything else to him, not even making him a boss. Instead, the Host Parrot remains the final boss even in that theme. Not to mention, for all that hype, the Happy Tree Friends' involvement is rather minimum. The Season One and Season Two clear screens are modified to include a Happy Tree Friend each, but nothing else is touched, not even the post-credits screen after beating the Final Boss.
• The Un Twist: The Final Boss is set up like this. Those who know typical Deadly Game tropes would easily guess that, despite the final episode being called "Plot Twist", is that the host is the final boss all along, which would make this more of a Captain Obvious Reveal. However, the episode name and the achievement name ("Knew it from the start") mean that the developers are already in on it when designing the final season, resulting in a mixed reaction of the two.
• Uncanny Valley: The guest Happy Tree Friends are also given Art Shift portraits for the Button Mashing minigame. However, unlike with the Crackpets whose wild artstyle change works in their design's favor, the sight of beefier Cuddles and gang (yes, including the sugar-obsessed Nutty) yet still retaining their cutesy faces only weirded people out, HTF fans or not.
• Uncertain Audience: The whole hype for Happy Tree Friends Edition, unless a fan enjoys both works. When the collaboration was announced, reception was mixed, as not every HTF fan likes video games. When the tie-in episode was announced to come along, fans flocked towards it more since it is what HTF is known for. Outside the fandom, the announcements barely got into mainstream, with people not into either work expressing confusion that HTF is still a thing, and as explained on Audience-Alienating Premise above, there are enough factors to turn mainstream gamers away from it. Then when the DLC and the episode dropped, the excitement was short-lived. On the DLC side, HTF fans are dominated with young children or teenagers that tend to not have the money to spend, not everyone likes Nintendo Hard roguelites, the clashing artstyles drive the HTF purists away, and the next key giveaway contest only had half of the expected participants (at least they still got the prize). On the episode side, it already had signs of a Broken Base not helped by it being the only episode HTF could produce within budget, yet all the resources were blown into what is basically a glorified Product Placement. So for all the devs' efforts in trying to please the HTF fans, it would not change the reality that it appealed to no one.
• Unexpected Character: Pretty much the Happy Tree Friends themselves. The cartoon's last major relevance was in around 2016 and its repetitive gimmick has already been considered unwelcome. Yet Vixa Games managed to collaborate, bringing in the show's characters and thus indirectly putting Happy Tree Friends on Nintendo and Sony consoles, the show's first time.
  • For a specific one from the DLC, Sniffles the anteater. He has never been playable in any official Happy Tree Friends game prior to this, and his last major role in that medium (Happy Tree Friends: Deadeye Derby) was as a non-playable boss character.
• Viewer Species Confusion: The Host Parrot tends to be mistaken for a chicken presumably due to his green feathers on top of his head resembling a rooster's comb. That, and his unintelligible speech in the stage selection screen sounds like clucking.