Video Game / Impressive Title

Impressive Title is an animal MMORPG created in 2008 by KovuLKD in which players can play as Disneyesque lions or felines and explore the world around them by hopping through bubble-shaped portals and holes to get to their destination.

In certain worlds, players have the choice to hunt prey known as Critters, which drop random accessories that their character can wear, along with Skills which grant the player certain abilities like Healing or Super-Speed. Some of these critters could also be tamed as pets, usually as either companions or as support in battle against other critters or even bosses. Alternatively, players could ignore critters entirely and instead trade items for the ones they want so they could decorate their characters and focus on roleplaying with friends via an online chat system.

Unfortunately, the game was susceptible to frequent attacks by hackers thanks to low security measures protecting the game's files, which allowed players to deliberately slow down servers by either scaling themselves to insanely large sizes and/or spawn hordes of critters in one place in order to cause massive frame rate drops for all players. In combination with moderation issues, hacking and stealing of both public and privatized items, and the need to focus all efforts on the development of another game at the time, these events ultimately culminated in a permanent shutdown of the game in February 2010.

Its official successor is FeralHeart, but the game also has many spiritual successors thanks to the original's source code being put up on the Keeping Impressive Title Open forum so fans host their own servers and modify the game to how they see fit. Unfortunately, this forum has also closed down in 2021 and parts that still exist have minimal activity.

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Tropes found in Impressive Title:

• Action Bar: For roleplaying or general silliness, there is a menu included to toggle emotes and actions like roaring, dancing, playing dead, etc.
• Action Pet: All tamed critters will assist players in a fight if given the opportunity.
• All There in the Manual: The only way to know that Aquanite and Natsume are female is by looking at their character info on their creator's page on DeviantArt.
• All There in the Script: Also, the only way to find out the name of the protagonist in Halfblood is in the credits, which lists her as Aquanite. However, most fans refer to the character as "Halfblood" due to accidentally skipping the credits and mistaking the story mode's title as a Character Title.
• Always Accurate Attack: Roar will always hit its target no matter how far you are from it.
• Always Night: Shrieking Hill always has a full moon and Tainted Plains is forever dark to suit its spooky theme.
• Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: The player character can be any color the player chooses, but also applies to the characters from the Halfblood story campaign, which feature Aquanite, a blue cat with a yellow-striped mane and Natsume, a purple lion with brown bird wings.
• Artistic License – Biology: Similar to The Lion King, players have tiger roars even though they have lion-based avatars. Also, the Monster Ray can roar despite manta rays possessing no vocal cords.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Most bosses are simply just Giant Mooks that are barely a few feet taller than the player, but the largest ones that take the cake are Earthshakers (giant elephants), Haunted Towers (giant ghost giraffes), and the Monster Ray (a Kraken-sized manta ray) as they're so large they take up most of the screen when fought up close.
• Author Avatar: In Tutorial mode, where the player can control a generic brown lion named "Kov" (in reference to KovuLKD, not the lion from The Lion King II: Simba's Pride), who talks to the player through scripted Speech Bubbles to teach them how to play the game.
• Bat Out of Hell: The player can fight bats in Castle and in caves like Secret Tunnel.
• Boss-Only Level: Last Cave fits this trope as nothing else spawns here aside from the Monster Ray, one of the largest and most powerful enemies in the game.
  • Wyvern Hills also counts, as it's the only place to fight the legendary Zombie Dragon.
• Bubblegloop Swamp: Marsh, an expansive marsh full of hawks, snakes, frogs, and the Great Hawk.
• Cap: All skills max out at 200, and a player can only equip up to 6 accessories while being able to carry 200 items total in their inventory.
• Cave Behind the Falls: Some of the portals to caves are hidden behind waterfalls, such as the portals to Secret Tunnel and Waterfall Cave, which can be found in the waterfalls of Default and Waterfall respectively.
• Character Customization: Players must create a lion or lion-like character before they can play the game. They can change the head and tail of their character to resemble whatever species they want to play as, along with altering size, markings, colors, or even adding wings.
• Close-Range Combatant: None of the critters have long-range attacks, so they're forced to take you head on in melee range.
• Common Place Rare: Twigs and roses, which have a 1% drop rate despite the abundance of trees and roses being found in several maps.
• Convection, Schmonvection: Practically worshipped, as players can walk on black mounds of cracking, red-hot lava unharmed and hang out near (or even inside) lava pits unscathed.
• Cute Kitten: The kittens found in Shadow Veldt, along with Mitzi the tuxedo kitten, are one of the many cute critters that cannot be fought based on their cuteness and their status as baby felines. So instead, players must praise the kittens in order to acquire skills or items, though it may take a while to get the latter.
• Deadly Lunge: Most critters such as the Wildebeest or Giraffe will lunge or ram at the player when attacking, and likewise, the Player themselves can use a Lunge attack to deal more damage.
• Dire Beast: Critters are typically ranked by size and strength, with Dire critters like the Dire Hare and Dire Ray being slightly bigger and stronger than their normal, realistically-sized counterparts.
• Disneyesque: It's no secret that the player characters strongly resemble the lions from The Lion King.
• Double Jump: Wingless players can perform double jumps in order to gain extra height.
• Downer Ending: After being wounded in the fight against Natsume, Aquanite jumps off a cliff and into a lake before everything Fades to Black, presumably drowning thanks to a paralyzing poison that Natsume inflicted on her.
• Dracolich: The Zombie Dragon, an undead wyvern with a halo above its head.
• Elemental Powers: The castle in… Castle contains pedestals of the traditional four elements Earth, Fire, Water and Air, along with new ones such as Ice, Dark, Light and Life. However, these are mostly for aesthetic purposes, unless you count the Cure skill as a power of Life.
• Everything Fades: After being defeated, critters will flop over (or fall to the ground if flying) and fade away.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: ReallyBig is a really big map, one of the largest in the game even. Other maps may qualify such as Savannah being a literal savannah and Ice being an icy tundra, though those tend to fall under Department of Redundancy Department.
• Eyepatch of Power: There is an eyepatch accessory that invokes this trope if players want to have their characters look like pirates or have only one eye if they haven't collected the Blind Eye item yet.
• Feathered Fiend: If provoked, hawks, vultures, and ospreys will come swooping down on you.
• Fireball Eyeballs: The Glowing Eye items give off this effect, as they're essentially fiery particles placed in front of the player's eyes when equipped.
• Flash Step: Whenever a player uses Zoom while fighting, the short burst of Super-Speed they get can place them behind enemies on occasion.
• Floating Continent: Not exactly a continent, but Ascension Island is still a giant floating island in the sky.
  • In Castle, there is a "secret" island high in the sky that is accessible by portal, which can be found on the map labeled as Secret.
• Floating Platforms: Depicted as floating rocks, they're a common feature throughout the game, though appear most prominently in Ascension Island where the player must scale (or fly past) 100 of these in order to make it to the giant island in the sky, but they can also be found in Default, Castle, Shrieking Hill, and Playground as a means to access portals or higher places.
• Giant Flyer: The Great Hawk boss, and in some ways, the Monster Ray since it’s a giant manta ray that can attack you above water.
• Giant Mook: Every boss except the Zombie Dragon are usually animals scaled-up to large proportions. Such bosses include but are not limited to, Mutant Hares, Overgrown Zebras, Giant Manta Rays, etc.
• Glowing Eyes: The Glowing Eye items, which give off a particle effect on the player's eyes to achieve this trope.
• Gravity Barrier: Averted. Players can run up hills, cliffs, and even walls regardless of how steep the slope is or how solid the walls are, and thus they do not act as natural barriers even in places where they should be, such as the maze in Labyrinth or the castle's walls in Castle. This was later fixed in FeralHeart.
• Green Hill Zone: Default, which is home to the Video Game Tutorial.
• Half-Breed Discrimination: Only in the game's story mode. It's implied that one of the reasons behind why Natsume is pursuing Aquanite is based on the latter's lineage, and calls her a "halfblood" at one point during story mode.
• Halloween Town: Not a town, but Shrieking Hill fits the bill with its gloomy hills, full moon sky, pumpkin-shaped lake, ghost lights, etc.
• Hammerspace: Exactly how these big cats put items away in their stash is unknown.
• Healing Hands: The Cure ability grants the player healing capabilities within their paws, allowing them to either heal themselves or others.
• Healing Spring: Lying down in any body of water can make players recover from their Wounded status faster.
• Hellish Horse: The Nightmare, a black horse (or zebra, since they both use the same model) with a fiery mane and tail.
• Ice Palace: The Castle and Sun Temple are made out of ice and snow.
• Impossible Item Drop: Claws from the Monster Ray boss, roses from manta rays, antlers from Red Pandas, the list goes on.
• Injured Vulnerability: Critters are easier to tame if their health is low.
• Invisible Wall: What prevents the player from running out of bounds on all maps.
• Jungle Japes: Jungle serves its role as the tropical, wet environment with its constant rain and lush undergrowth.
• Killer Rabbit: Any hare could count, but the Mutant Hare boss in particular can give you quite a beating.
• King Mook: Monster Ray, as it’s the largest of the manta ray mook family (including the Giant Manta Rays) and spawns only one at a time in a Boss-Only Level.
  • The Great Hawk in Marsh, compared to its smaller Giant Hawk cousin found in Castle.
• Lethal Lava Land: Lava, minus the "lethal" part as players can freely swim through and underneath the lava with no side effects. Heck, if you're wounded, the lava may help you recover faster as the game still reads it as a body of water (the only difference being texture files).
• Life Meter: Both players and critters have green bars to display their health, though critters may possess more than one if strong enough.
• Living Shadow: The Shadows, which are the shadowy black lions that appear in Tutorial mode and the Halfblood story campaign.
• Long-Range Fighter: If they have enough Zoom and Roar skills, players can choose to attack prey and bosses from afar with these abilities.
• Mighty Roar: The Player has two of these, one in the Action Bar menu for roleplaying purposes, and the Roar skill for damaging enemies. The Monster Ray boss also bellows its own version of a MightyRoar when attacking players though it does no damage except maybe mental.
• Misplaced Wildlife: While its unusual appearance may look like it's from the deep, cold, dark depths, the Nautilus is actually found near coral reefs and in the bright open ocean, not in confined sea caves like Serpent's Pass.
• Mix-and-Match Critters: The Character Customization has players choose between different heads, wings and tails for their characters, allowing them to create creatures like lynxes with fox tails or lions with butterfly wings.
• Moonwalk Dance: Players can have their lions moonwalk in place by clicking on this in the Action Bar menu.
• Multiple Life Bars: For critters if their health is over 500hp, as each extra bar represents an extra 500hp and they disappear as the critter's health is lowered.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Earthshakers, Haunted Towers, etc.
• Ninja Looting: Unfortunately, this was very common as critters would only drop one item at a time at very low rates and players would scramble for it after a kill. The most common strategy was to exploit the "Block User" feature, which rendered targeted players invisible and thus make it easier to click on and pick up the loot.
• Noisy Nature: Manta rays, no matter how monstrous in size, cannot roar or much less make any noise at all due to lack of vocal cords.
• Non-Human Undead: The Undead consist of a variety of animals with not one human to be found.
• Non-Lethal K.O.: If a player's health reaches zero, they become "Wounded" and a red bar pops up to show the amount of time they have left before they can get back into the fight.
• Non-Standard Character Design: The critters are lowpoly, and have vaguely realistic textures compared to cel-shaded, Disneyesque players.
• Noob Cave: Surprisingly not First Cave, but actually the Secret Tunnel as it's one of the first caves that the player can come across and it's also populated with the weakest critters in the game, mice.
• Our Dragons Are Different: The Zombie Dragon is actually a wyvern, a creature with only two legs and a pair of wings, not four legs like with a traditional dragon.
• Panthera Awesome: The player avatars, even if they're occasionally Mix-and-Match Critters.
• Poison Is Evil: In the Halfblood story campaign, Natsume resorts to using poison against the hero when their fight goes against her favor.
• Poisonous Person: Natsume, who uses her claws to deliver a nasty poison to Aquanite.
• Polluted Wasteland: Badlands has rivers full of vibrant green acid.
• Portal Crossroad World: Technically every map since they all have at least one or two portals to another world, making some places necessary to cross in order to find a particular portal, but Default houses the most portals and is primarily used for traveling (at least outside of trading and social interaction).
• Pumpkin Person: If you wear a Pumpkin Mask.
• Rare Random Drop: There are many to pick from as it's not uncommon for drop rates to fall to 1% with certain enemies, but the items that always fall below 1% regardless of the critter killed are Rainbow Bracelets (0.2% to 0.05%) and Xaph horns (0.1% to 0.05%).
• Rat Stomp: Specifically the mice in Secret Tunnel, as they're one of the first enemies the player can come across.
• Razor Wings: Due to the low-polygon nature of feathery wings, they give off this effect as they occasionally slash away at critters during a fight. In the game's files, the attack is called "Wing Slash", confirming that the wings are indeed sharp.
• Recycled Soundtrack: The game borrows several pieces from The Elder Scrolls series to work as ambient music, such as Nerevar Rising, The Road Most Traveled, Silt Sunrise, and Caprice from Morrowind, and Through the Valleys and Auriel's Ascension from Oblivion.
  • In the Christmas Update, Bobby Helms's Jingle Bell Rock can be heard in parts of snowy Default.
  • The now-obsolete story mode campaign, Halfblood, instead borrows its songs from the Final Fantasy franchise by using Final Fantasy III's The Landing for its Dramatic Chase Opening, Final Fantasy VII's The One Winged Angel as boss music for the fight with Natsume, and finally Tenrai Divinity II for the closing outro.
  • World of Warcraft's The Shaping of the World is heard in the Tutorial and in the credits of Halfblood.
• Regenerating Health: Ghost and undead critters have this ability by default, making them useful as Action Pets as they can heal you whenever you get hurt. But if they're not pets, then killing or taming them becomes much more difficult.
• Respawning Enemies: It's impossible to truly empty maps as they're all meant to spawn critters endlessly to allow the player to farm items or skills.
• Ribcage Ridge: The monster skeleton in Castle.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: All unfightable critters tend to be cute animals such as kittens, baby penguins, and ducklings.
• Rock of Limitless Water: At the end of the maze in Labyrinth, there is a waterfall that inexplicably pours down from a floating rock in the sky.
• Roundhouse Kick: It looks more like a Spin Attack on a lion, but still counts as a kick and the attack is called "Roundhouse" in the game's files.
• Savage Setpiece: Usually, critters only engage in battle if they're attacked first. Otherwise, they're just part of the scenery.
• Screen Shake: Earthshakers, which are giant elephants, give off this effect to all nearby players whenever they're roaming around or attacking.
• Sea Monster: The Sea Serpent boss of Serpent's Pass, a giant blue snake.
• See You in Hell: Aquanite says this to Natsume shortly before jumping off a cliff.
• Sequence Breaking: Due to lack of a Gravity Barrier, players can completely cheese Labyrinth by running through and over the walls with little to no issue. Of course, if they have wings, they can also just simply fly over.
• Shifting Sand Land: Desert acts as this compared to Ice's Slippy-Slidey Ice World, Lava's Lethal Lava Land, and Jungle's Jungle Japes settings.
• Sickly Green Glow: See Technicolor Toxin below.
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: Ice is definitely an ice world, but without the slippin' and slidin'.
• Speech Bubbles: In local chat mode, the player's messages not only appear in the chatbox, but also appear directly above their lion's head in the form of blue boxes with yellow text.
• Spin Attack: This time called the Sweep attack.
• Super Not-Drowning Skills: Players never have to come up for air, which makes things useful when hunting critters underwater.
• Super-Persistent Predator: All fightable critters. If you decide to run away from a fight, they will chase after you forever until you either slay them or leave the map, regardless if you're wounded or not.
• Super-Speed: The Zoom skill grants players a short burst of speed so they can cross maps faster.
• Support Party Member: Tends to happen if your pet can only heal and not attack, especially if they're wingless and stuck to the ground while you're fighting in the air.
• Technicolor Toxin: The acid in Badlands emits a bright green color to indicate its toxicity.
• The Maze: The entire purpose of Labyrinth, though players can simply fly over it or even run over it due to the game's Sequence Breaking.
  • Another Tunnel also counts, as it's a series of identical caves and tunnels that are intentionally designed to get the player lost. The only difference between tunnels are the portals, which lead to different sections and potentially other worlds like Shrieking Hill, Hidden Valley, and even Bonfire Island.
• The Undead: Of the ghost variety, particularly in Tainted Plains where there are ghost versions of Gazelles, Manta Rays, and so on. They are effectively a Palette Swap of normal enemies but more translucent, fading in and out to resemble invisibility even though they can still be clicked on and targeted by the player.
• Tuft of Head Fur: Players have plenty to choose from as manes or hair for their characters, all of varying lengths and hairstyles.
• Underground Level: Hydro Pillar, Serpent's Pass, and Last Cave as their portals are located below sea level and house critters that can only be found deep beneath the ocean. And of course, Underwater Cave.
• Unholy Ground: Going by the name, ghostly animals, and pools of suspiciously-red liquid everywhere, Tainted Plains.
• Video Game Tutorial: The Tutorial mode involved an avatar of the game's creator teaching the player how to use basic controls, along with how to fight and heal themselves.

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