Deep in space, the metal artifcial planet called the Megastructure is a dystopian hell-scape. Built around the Matter, a mysterious energy core, erected on the backs of mindless androids called Denzels and ruled by the megalomaniacal Garbanzos family and their enterprise INFONET.
200 years after the establishing of the Megastructure, Scientist Shinji Fallon and her self-built Denzel Cherry live a relatively peaceful life among the misery - until INFONET comes knocking on their door, brutalizing Cherry and kidnapping Shinji.
After being found and repaired by renegade mechanic Raz, Cherry only has one goal: rescue her creator and love Shinji. And break some heads while she's at it.
Cookie Cutter is a Metroidvania Action RPG developed by Subcult Joint LTD and published by Rogue Games, Inc. It released on December 14th, 2023 and is available on Steam.
Contains the following tropes:
- 2½D: The game is played from a dollhouse perspective.
- Action Girl: Cherry slaughters her way through hundreds of fellow denzels without stopping or slowing down. Over the course of the game she masters several weapons and new functions in under a second and brings down opponents over twice her size and weight.
- All for Nothing:
- Cherry manages to infiltrate Salem's fortress and get to Shinji. But due to Salem's torture, Shinji is already on the brink of death and dies shortly after Cherry finds her.
- Shinji lured INFONET to her and Cherry's hideout so she could provide a distraction for Cherry and Cherry could return the Red Seed. But due to being shot in the head, Cherry forgets all about the plan and instead wastes her time rescuing Shinji instead of bringing the Red Seed back.
- Ambiguous Ending: The secret ending shows us the creation of a denzel who bears a striking resemblance to Shinji and proceeds to set something in motion she refers to as "Awakening". This throws several things we thought we knew about Shinji into question. Was the plan really for Cherry to return the Red Seed or did she know from the start Cherry would prioritize saving her over the mission? Is the denzel we see Shinji herself, reborn as a robot via Brain Upload or merely another one of her creations?
- And I Must Scream: Every Denzel except for Cherry is basically a human consciousness trapped in a robot-body and forced to serve the Garbanzos-family.
- Anti-Hero: Cherry is a crass and rude individual who opposes the Garbanzos family not because of their inhumane business practices or to save the citizens of the Megatsructure but because Salem kidnapped her girlfriend. She's at best apathetic to the suffering of everyone else with the only non-Shinji character she comes to care for being Raz. Justified as Cherry is still a robot and feelings that aren't her love and devotion to Shinji are pretty new and foreign to her.
- Bait-and-Switch: After defeating Puanani, Cherry sets up what appears to be a finishing move - only for her to simply bitch-slap Puanani, then demand Puanani listen to her this time.
- Big Bad: Salem Garbanzos, the current head of INFONET and the one responsible for Shinji's kidnapping and Cherry's Near-Death Experience. Cherry spends the entire game hunting him down, so she can free Shinji.
- Body Horror:
- The very first playable segment in the game has you play as a horrifically mutilated Cherry, dragging her half-deactivated body outside in a futile effort to save Shinji. It's anything but a pretty sight: Cherry's leg is missing, her face is half-off and the cables hanging loose through the holes punched through her make it look like her organs are spilling out.
- The irradiated civilian Cherry and Regina find when entering the Bloody Den. His skin his sickly green and bubbling, his eyes are popping out of his skull and somehow he's still alive.
- Boss Tease:
- The Dickheads, Salem's personal denzel bodyguards, have a prominent role in the opening cutscene where they beat the crap out of Cherry, then kidnap Shinji at Salem's orders. Needless to say when Cherry meets them again it's payback time.
- Salem himself counts as well as he spends the entire game mocking Cherry over screens from the safety of his fortress and is convinced she's no threat. He ends up being the Final Boss and after what he's done to Shinji Cherry is more than ready to finally put him in the ground.
- Bright Is Not Good: Salem Garbanzos' skin is bleached white to a horrifying degree. He's the game's main antagonist, popping up on screens every now and again to taunt Cherry about him holding Shinji captive and torturing her.
- Controllable Helplessness: The first time you get to take control of Cherry is just after she's been completely trashed by the Dickheads with her only form of movement being a desperate crawl and drag across the floor.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Cherry gets literally destroyed by the Dickheads in their first confrontation, which starts with Salem shooting her in the head. This becomes a plot-point later on as Cherry being shot led her to forget that she was supposed to return the Red Seed while Salem was distracted with Shinji.
- Defeat Equals Friendship: Subverted. Cherry beating the crap out of Puanani doesn't turn the latter any friendlier toward the former. Rather the opposite. The only reason Puanani eventually agrees to cooperate is that as much as she hates Cherry, they both hate Salem even more.
- Degraded Boss: The Pissed-Off Mudman is the boss of the Denzel Factory before becoming a mook in later levels.
- Door to Before: As is typical for a Metroidvania, the different areas Cherry explores all have doors that serve as shortcuts to previously traversed sections of the map after you manage to open them.
- Downer Ending: Cherry arrives too late to save Shinji but just in time to see her love die from the wounds Salem inflicted on her. After killing Salem and retrieving Shinji's body, Cherry is told by Raz several days later that the Red Seed is killing her from the inside. Adding onto that, it's revealed in Cherry's last dream/flashback that her primary function was always to return the Red Seed and that Shinji intentionally led INFONET to their doorstep in order to sacrifice herself so that Cherry would have enough time to return the Seed. Making Cherry's quest to save her All for Nothing.
- Evil Is Bigger: The denzels INFONET uses are all much bigger and more heavily armed than Cherry. Special mentions go to the Dickheads who work directly under Salem and make their debut when they brutalize Cherry in the opening cutscene.
- Fan Disservice: Cherry might as well be the poster girl for the trope. The game starts out with her being brutalized and shot in the head, after which the player gets to control her in a pretty gruesome drawn out sequence where she drags her mutilated, half-naked body outside the house to rescue Shinji. In the game proper, Cherry walks around in a skirt that flips up whenever she's jumping to show her underwear, but it's not presented as tantalizing or sexy and because it happens literally every time Cherry jumps the player is likely to be completely desensitized to it after a while. Oh, and she also frequently converses with her private parts.
- Fantastic Racism: Most people in the Megastructure aren't too fond of denzels, seeing them as little more than INFONETS murder machines. Cherry has trouble gaining Puanani and the rebellion as allies due to being a denzel herself and actually has to fight Puanani off the first time they meet because the latter immediately attacks her after identifying her as non-human.
- Finishing Move: Brutals are Cherry's way of finishing off mooks after they reach an HP threshold. Doing so allows her to regain HP back. It's also how she finishes off bosses when they reach 0 to make sure they stay down.
- Foreshadowing:
- The opening cutscene explains that the denzels are a result of Brain Uploading and subsequent Brainwashing of deceased humans, sold by the Garbanzos family as immortality in nigh-indestructible bodies. The secret ending reveals a denzel that is heavily implied to be Shinji.
- During one of her verbal spats with Salem, Cherry calls out to Shinji. Shinji responds by the telling Cherry to forget about her and do what she was "made to do". The last log reveals that Shinji originally created Cherry to return the Red Seed to the core of the Megastructure and that Shinji intentionally used herself as bait to get INFONET off of Cherry's back.
- Groin Attack: In the final battle, Cherry's finishing move on Garbanzo is dealing a nasty one on him by stomping on his crotch repeatedly before kicking him out of the platform they are on.
- Half the Man He Used to Be: The Brutal for Orange Drifters has Cherry pull out a chainsaw from hyperspace and bisect them vertically.
- La Résistance: Puanani is the leader of one in Bastardville, having fought a pretty much hopeless battle against Salem's forces for some time.
- Shear Menace: Puanani fights against Cherry with giant scissors.
- Shout-Out:
- In Pneuma Chambers, a platform has a Lakitu painted on it.
- In the E.T. Foundry, a cave has a giant spike shaped like Penitent One's helmet. His face, however, is smiling.
- In Bastardville, you can find a man named Foby Tox who gives Cherry the Hyperdrive ability for bringing him one of each rare monster ingredient. You can find a man who says "I Am Error." Cherry is confused, before Error says he's just really high.
- Achievement/Trophy names.
- Friendship Is Magic: Defeat Puanani
- On Your Left: Obtain the Air Dash
- Space Whale: A dead Kujira can be found in the E.T. Foundry after the Autechre boss battle. It's named after the bake-kujira Youkai.
