Video Game / Psycutlery

The heartwarming tale of a girl and her spork.

Psycutlery is a 2D Platform Game where you fight using a floating, cyclopean spork.

It was solo developed by Luke Tarlowe, formerly known as Thunder Dragon, who is known for, among other things, the Mario Fan Game Psycho Waluigi.

You play as Lillian the Alien, a girl with Psychic Powers living on the Planet Geozaic, under the tutelage of legendary psychic Master Tines.

Many years ago, a mysterious force known as The Distortion was sealed away. But that was a long time ago, and the Distortion has begun to seep out, threatening the galaxy and - worst of all - destroying Master Tines's diner. Now Lilian, a mysterious alien girl with powerful psychic abilities who crash-landed on Geozaic as a child (along with her Evil Twin sister, Nailil), is charged by Master Tines to complete her psychic training so that she can destroy the Distortion once and for all.

Aided by her telekinetically-controlled spork (which the player can name!), Lilian will jump, float, grab, and toss her way across the varied environments of Geozaic, complete her training, uncover the secret history of her world, and take absolutely none of it seriously along the way.

Psycutlery can be downloaded free at the link above. So what are you waiting for? Download it and get sporkin'!

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Psycutlery contains examples of:

• Abandoned Laboratory: Astray Abyss actually used to be a lab owned by Dr. DeVoide before it was used to seal away the Distortion.
• All the Worlds Are a Stage:
  • In "IT'S ALL BUT MEMORY", once the Distortion breaks free from Astray Abyss, Lillian is forced to go through all of the worlds she has visited at this point in the game in reverse, from Plateau de Glow to Epoch Heights.
  • The penultimate stage also has Lillian traverse through the condensed version of worlds and their respective stages she visited as they get consumed by the Distortion.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: Shall the player beat the side area of each world, they'll be rewarded with a special outfit for sporklops, each being based on a character in the game.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • When the player leaves the stage after getting a Checkpoint and re-enters it, they'll be able to select that checkpoint and start from there. Selecting a checkpoint will also highlight where an Eye Emblem is hidden. This is useful for those who missed at least one Eye Emblem after finishing the stage.
  • If the player struggles with the level they're playing, they'll be given an option to retry with double the health.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: When Master Tines mind controls Rancidelle into revealing his "official fan club"'s true identity as DeVoide Corps as well as their evil intentions, he also has her comment on his moustache for no seemingly no other reason than to brag about how great it looks.
• Art Course: "Pilgrimage of Pencils" has Lillian platform through giant pencils and and on doodles that she can create by sticking Sporklops on balls of scribbles before going into another dimension that's based around doodles.
• Athletic Arena Level: "That Ain't How You Play Sport Ball" takes place in a Sport Ball Arena where a match between Placeburgh Potbellied Pigs and the Puntsalots takes place.
• Bad People Abuse Animals: Due to him being immortal, Dr. DeVoide forced Darkles to test her Teleportals for her. As a result, Darkles became bound to wall and was forced to stay there while DeVoide gathers some data from the experiment. DeVoide comes to a conclusion that her psychic powers are too spicy and that she needs someone whose psychic powers are more pure to power up the Teleportals for her. While she leaves, DeVoide leaves Darkles stuck for a while. Since then, Darkles remains traumatized by the Teleportals.
  • There's also the fact that she was willing to Mind Control Terra Zaic's pet frog Astranura into being her puppet much later after Terra frees Darkles.
• Bee Afraid: Stingmatisms are one-eyed Bee enemies who fly towards Lillian to attack her.
• Big Bad: The Distortion is an Eldritch Abomination that threatened Geozaic many years ago before being sealed away into the Astray Abyss. In the present day, Lillian is being trained by Master Tines to destroy it once and for all. However, the Distortion isn't the only threat to worry about. There's also the DeVoide Corps who want to use the Distortion's power to take over the universe.
• Big Eater:
  • When faced with obstacles in the form of large blocks of cheese, watermelon, and other edible substances, Lilian deals with them in the most obvious and straightforward way you can imagine. Later on, this is also how she absorbs the Distortion.
  • Naillil takes this trope a step further as she likes to eat monsters and inedible objects for the living. In fact, the Hasty Buffet mode revolves around around her eating to keep the timer up.
• Bragging Rights Reward:
  • Beating all of the game's secret stages will unlock Power Palette which allows Lillian to use whatever power-up they like when replaying a level, whether with limited or unlimited uses. This applies to Hasty Buffet too!
  • Beating Hasty Buffet will unlock the Splosion Mode for the main story where Lillian can cause explosions and chain reactions when she throws projectiles at her targets.
• Brain in a Jar: Despite her physical form being destroyed by the now corrupted Terra Zaic, Dr. DeVoide manages to survive as a semi-conscious brain after she takes advantage of Terra's unwitting reality warping to make herself immortal. However, it wouldn't be until 450 years later when her Corps finds her and encase her in a jar before taking her to her mother computer as the main ingredient.
• Brain Uploading: When the DeVoide Corps retrieved Dr. DeVoide's brain, they inserted it into the mother computer AKA Astranura's crown. However, DeVoide wouldn't fully get her consciousness back until she starts to gather psychic energy from other psychics throughout years.
• Breath Weapon:
  • The projectile based power-ups allow Lillian to spit out said projectiles on enemies and other obstacles to deal damages.
  • The Fire Breath power-up, as its name suggests, lets Lillian breathe out fire.
• Call-Back: There are multiple of those to not just Psycho Waluigi, being its Spiritual Successor and all, but the Toad Strikes Back duology as well:
  • Psycho Waluigi:
    • In "Home Sweet Home", Lillian mentions that Naillil once installed a bootleg game called Psycho Franscescco on their Gametangular Prism to test out her hacking skills.
    • Two of the levels in the game take place inside someone's mind, similiar to one of that game's secret stages, "Hazel's Experiment", even having the orange sky for the background.
    • The Final Boss fight is similar to the one with Psycho Iris at the end of that game, even having a form that attacks with spinning lasers which the player has to between to avoid taking damage.
    • In the Hasty Buffet mode, Naillil gets a crown after completing a level, similiar to Waluigi. However, the crown depends on how many seconds are left on the timer instead of how much currency she collected in the level.
  • Toad Strikes Back:
    • One of the earlier secret stages, "To Weather the Waterfall" has a similiar concept to "Cascade Reefs from that game, having the gimmick of the player being unable to swim due to the water rapidly going down.
    • Dr. DeVoide laughing should the player die to her in her Boss Fight is a possible reference to how King Koopa laughs when he defeats Toad in the True Final Boss battle in that game.
  • Toadette Strikes:
    • The pink tulips that appear in multiple levels are similiar to the red ones in that game, being able to almost instantly respawn when they get plucked.
    • The transitional areas between most worlds in that game also make a return.
    • The final phase of the Boss Figth against Dr. DeVoide is similiar to the fight with Cursed Kammy Koopa due to both of them involving the player riding a flying Power Up Mount to fight the villainess.
    • Just like with "The Nightmare" stage in that game, the setting of Epoch Heights will fade to black as Lillian approaches the final level.
• Canon Character All Along: In the official Eyes In Everything Discord server, the creator of the game, Luke Tarlowe confirms that the spirit that possesses Naillil's spork in the Hasty Buffet is actually Psycho Iris from Psycho Waluigi as he spends most of the mode trying to control his urge to destroy everything.
• Card-Carrying Villain: Having been assigned as the Evil Twin at birth, Nailil has accepted this role with enthusiasm, constantly ranting and raving about her plans for what she'll do when she takes over the world. Lilian is nothing but encouraging of this.
• Checkpoint: There are stone pillars throughout levels that Lillian can carve into statues of herself. The game itself even saves them, so if the player were to return to the level, they can choose to start from one of the checkpoints.
• Chekhov's Skill: While Naillil's hacking skills are brought up early on in the game as a simple gag, they fully come into play when Naillil uses them to save Lillian from being dropped into Astranura Dr. DeVoide.
• Circus of Fear: The "Bones n' Balloons" stage takes place in an abandoned bone-themed Amusement Park infested by monster and Nightmare Face balloons. You also fight a giant Monster Clown bat Honkula at the end.
• Colony Drop: The DeVoide Corps plans to have Astranura mind controlled into crashing into Geozaic to have the Distortion's power absorbed into the CPU of the Mother Computer on top of her. As a result, many people would've died.
• Concept Art Gallery: Everytime the player beats a Secret Stage, they're rewarded by a Doodle, usually a concept art. There's even a "Discuss" option where the characters from the game discuss the Doodle themselves. However, some of the Doodles aren't really concept art and instead are miscallenous image that don't have anything to do with the game's developement.
• Cuteness Proximity: Lillian does this when she finds out that the mayor of Birchbark Ridge is actually a dog. She does this again when she sees cats for the first time in the "Scratch Post Supreme" stage.
• Dance Party Ending: The final Secret Stage ends with one after Lillian beats the harder version of the Final Boss.
• Degraded Boss: Some of the mini-bosses will often appear as regular enemies later on in the game.
• Disc-One Final Dungeon: Astray Abyss is set up to be the location where Lillian would fight the Distortion but is only really at halfway through the game.
• Disney Villain Death: When Lillian follows him all the way to Astranura's Crown, Gluttnutt makes a run for it, only to trip up and fall into Astranura's mass.
• Dual Boss: In "Shoozok Won't Stop Stomping", Lillian has to fight both Shoozok Too and its ghost counterpart while inside Shoozok's body. However, she can only hurt the actual Shoozok and not the ghost.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Lillian herself appears on an advertisement on one of the buildings in the first stage of Mechopolis from Spectacular Sparky, a game that came out three years before hers.
• Eternal Engine: Astranura's crown is, in truth, the mother computer created by Dr. DeVoide to harness enough psychic energy to warp reality and help take over the universe.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Despite being a Card-Carrying Villain, Naillil doesn't really want to hurt people and other creatures that are sentient, especially if they have families, and only goes after evil monsters.
• Evil Chef: Rancidelle is a zombified witch-chef who works for DeVoide Corps and serves as the third major boss in the game.
• Evil Twin: Invoked by Master Tines. Upon discovering a pair of twin alien babies and recognizing that one of them had to be the evil twin, he decided it would be very bad if it was Lilian, who had the potential to be an immensely powerful psychic, and thus assigns the role to her sister. Fortunately, Nailil does not seem to mind.
• Expy:
  • Some of the enemies in the game are clearly inspired by the ones in Psycho Waluigi. To boot, there are: Puntsalots who are inspired by Hut-Huts, Shinombies who take from Ninjettes, Scubombs which are based on Bob-Bats and Dreadmills and Lightning Rodnies which are similar to the enemies of the same name.
  • Outside of Psycho Waluigi, we also have Tentinks which take cues from Poison Bloopers from Toadette Strikes, being squid-like enemies who swim up and down and shoot ink at Lillian.
• Eye Motifs: Eyes show up as a major design motif throughout the game. (Not for nothing is Luke Tarlowe's creative collective called "Eyes in Everything".)
• Eyes Do Not Belong There: Psychics in training typically channel their powers through an object of some kind, and when their powers reach a certain level, said object will spontaniously sprout an eye.
• Freudian Excuse:
  • The reason why Darkles is so afraid of Teleportals is because Dr. DeVoide forced him to test one of them for her, leading to him getting stuck in process and stayed that way for a while.
  • Naillil became a Card-Carrying Villain because Master Tines neglected training her due to not being as powerful as her sister and has deemed her the Evil Twin because of it.
• Funny Spoon: A floating, semi-sentient, mind-controlled spork with a single eyeball (which the player can name) forms the game's central mechanic. It can be launched like a boomerang for attacking, eating, grabbing, and throwing things. In some cases, it can also be used as a steppingstone. It can even wear different accessories!
• Goomba Stomp: One of the secret stages in the game gives Lillian the ability to jump on enemies to deal damage.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Dr. DeVoide, the Mother of Teleportation herself, is the one behind everything bad that happened in the game. From the Distortion's creation to DeVoide Corps' actions, all of it can be traced back to DeVoide alone.
• Gosh Dang It to Heck!: In one of his letters found in the final level of the game, Master Tines says that he still refers to Hell as "Heck" even as an old man when he tells his late parents that he's going there after he dies.
• Green Hill Zone: One of the first stages in the game "Frogs Can't Farm" takes place in a grassy field and has crops that Lillian can use as projectiles.
• Heroic Sacrifice: In order to save the world from being destroyed and give Terra Zaic her life back, Lilian consumes the entirety of the Distortion, knowing full well that doing so will kill her. And then, just as she's made peace with her fate, Master Tines absorbs it all from her, keeping it under control just long enough for her to defeat him, ending the threat once and for all.
• Hive Mind: Shoozok constantly refers to itself as one.
• Hub City: Placeburgh is the third world in the game and is often said to be very unremarkable for a city.
• Hub Level: Much like in two of Luke Tarlowe's previous games, each world has a hub where the player can talk to NPCs and play levels in any order they like. However, unlike those games, they'll need to beat the first set of levels the game gives them before they could play the rest of them in each world.
• Human Aliens: In an unusually literal example of this trope, Lillian and Nailil are both human (or at least appear to be so) and aliens (in that they are not native to Geozaic).
• Idiot Hair: Naillil has a rather cowlick cowlick on her hair. Averted when she has her hair down.
• It's All About Me: Not only does King Gluttnutt IX love to talk about how great he is, but he's also willing to have everyone on Geozaic, including the other Gluttnutt clones, get engulfed by Astranura, just so he could use the Distortion's power to create an utopia for himself and himself only.
• Journey to the Center of the Mind: one of the last stages in the game has Lillian travelling through Master Tines' mind.
• King Mook: Berriboss is a giant Berribad who serves as the first major boss in the game.
• Lava Is Boiling Kool-Aid: In a rare literal example, aspiring villain Nailil couldn't get actual lava for her Volcano Lair, so she settles for flooding her basement with orange gelatin.
• Levels Take Flight: Some of the levels will have Lillian riding a dark skinned flying unicorn named Darkles.
• Living Drawing: Scribblord can draw living doodles of enemies and send them to attack Lillian during his Boss Fight. He even draws a giant grotesque doodle of Lillian herself in the second phase.
• Locomotive Level: There's two of them in the game, with the second one having bombs as the gimmick.
• Loves the Sound of Screaming: In "To Weather the Waterfall", Lillian mentions that the pleads of mercy from monsters are what brings her inner peace.
• Mind Control: This is one of the skills that top-tier psychics have at their disposal. Master Tines uses it with great reluctance, knowing full well that psychic powers of that intensity draw out the Distortion.
• Monster Clown: Honkula is a giant bat-like monster that resembles a clown's face and serves as one of the mini-bosses in the game.
• Mundane Utility: Despite being percieved as a legendary psychic back in the day, Master Tines used to use his powers to run a restaurant and cook food for other people. Lillian even lampshades this:
  Lillian: They say that one of his power could've conquered the world if he wanted... But no, he decided to use his powers to just... do chef stuff, I guess. Talk about a missed opportunity!
• My God, What Have I Done?: After she seemingly kills off Dr. DeVoide, Terra Zaic finds out that she's been destroying Geozaic in a fit of rage and declares herself to be no better than DeVoide and that she deserves to be sealed away.
• Mythology Gag:
  • In the discussion for an unlockable doodle of a Tentinkle, a specific Tentink named Tentink Developer is brought up, with their acronym being, of course, TD. TD is also an acronym for Thunder Dragon which used to be Luke Tarlowe's internet persona back when they used to make Mario Fan Games.
  • "Up in the Dump" has a hidden statue of an anthropomorphic dragon dressed up as a king which is based on the Thunder Dragon statue, an old inside joke within the Mario Fan Game Galaxy community. However, it no longer kills people upon contact due to its curse having been long gone.
• Nightmare Fetishist: Lillian is intrigued by the idea of feeling fear, to the point she expresses disappointment that, should she stay in the Astray Abyss for a vacation for at least a year, she'd no longer be scared of the place.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: Despite claiming she wants to help Geozaic, Dr. DeVoide is perfectly fine with incinerating it with the mind-controlled Astranura to absorb the Distortion and use it to take over the universe.
• One-Winged Angel:
  • After taking enough hits, Berriboss takes on some very special shades that transform him into Ultra Berriboss DX, now shining with rainbow colors. Although Lillian can't hurt Berriboss by sticking Sporklops into him, she can still use projectiles to deal damage.
  • During the Final Boss battle, after he takes a certain amount of hits, Master Tines loses control over the Distortion inside his body and transforms into a shapeshifting Eldritch Abomination.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: In order to not let on that they're aliens to the mostly-amphibian residents of Geozaic, Lilian and her sister wear frog disguises, which consist of green jumpsuits with hair ribbons reminiscent of frog-eyes. This more-or-less passes without comment.
• Platforming Pocket Pal: Sporklops is a floating one-eyed spork that serves as Lillian's psychic vessel. It follows her throughout the adventure and serves as her main method of attacking. It can also emote, despite the lack of voice.
• Post-Final Level: The final stage simply has Lillian traversing through a hallway of mummified psychic vessels before facing off the Final Boss.
• Power Up Mount: As mentioned above, Darkles is a flying unicorn that Lillian rides in some levels. He can charge at enemies by using the Jump Button and will be forced to leave when Lillian approaches a Teleportal due to his fear of them.
• Promoted to Playable: When the player beats the main story, they will unlock the Hasty Buffet mode where they get to play as Lillian's sister, Naillil.
• Pungeon Master: Master Tines loves to make puns when talking to Lillian, as bad as they are.
• Punny Name: Names Geozaic and, to a lesser extent, Terra Zaic are both plays on the word mozaic.
• Reality Warper: It's rumored that a sufficiently-powerful psychic is able to assert changes on reality itself by will alone. This is certainly the case for Terra Zaic, who turned her beloved pet frog into a sun and created a planet full of sentient life, all without meaning to.
• Recurring Boss: Lillian will have to fight her sister Naillil a couple of times throughout the game.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: The Distortion was sealed away into Astray Abyss by the Mother of Teleportation 500 years before the events of the game.
• Secret Level: When the player collects all three Eye Emblems in the stage, its secret alternative counterpart will be unlocked, even having its own unique gimmick most of the time.
• Shout-Out:
  • One bit in the release trailer has Sporklops renamed to Sparky.
  • Lillian and Naillil own a game console named Gametangular Prism which is clearly based off of Nintendo Gamecube.
  • The second phase of Rancidelle's fight where Lillian gets trapped inside Rancidelle's cauldron and has to use the spinning blades to destroy the Rancidelle heads infesting it is clearly inspired by the fight against Prince Froggy from Yoshi's Island.
  • The eggs seen in the second half of "Shoozok's Stomping Ground" and "Abomination Infestation" are reminiscent of the ones seen in Gemini Man's stage from Mega Man 3.
  • One of the side areas in the game pays homage to the original Super Mario Bros. game, complete with the inability to scroll back and the Bound Blob power-up substituting the Fire Flower.
• The Sociopath: Dr. DeVoide is a Mad Scientist who doesn't care about how many lives she takes or ruins, as long as it benefits her goals of taking over the universe.
• Stuff Blowing Up: Beating Hasty Buffet unlocks the Splosion Mode for the main story. With this mode on, Lillian can obliterate enemies and obstacles by throwing them at each other, complete with chain reactions and such.
• Super Not-Drowning Skills: There are multiple underwater stages, and no oxygen management mechanic. Lilian comments on this but no explanation is provided, simply saying that it's a good thing that she can apparently breathe underwater.
• Third-Person Person: King Gluttnutt IX takes this to its Logical Extreme, speaking entirely in third-person narration about his grand (and entirely fabricated) exploits.
• Throw the Mook at Them: Lilian's main attack is grabbing things and throwing them at enemies, and frequently, the things being grabbed are other enemies.
• Time Trial: The unlockable Hasty Buffet mode has Naillil traverse through the game's levels in under 100 seconds. She can stall the timer by defeating monsters and destroying blocks, mainly by eating them. Depending on how many seconds are left on the timer, Naillil will be rewarded with a crown.
• Title Drop: At one point in the game, Lillian calls herself a psycutlerist and describes the "job" as throwing floating sporks at mental issues.
• Underground Level: Crankstone Quarry is the second world in the game. It is a mine run by robots and is said to have rather questionable safety standards.
• Vile Villain, Laughable Lackey: Dr. DeVoide and King Gluttnutt can be respectively considered this due to the latter being the former's puppet king. DeVoide is a vile Mad Scientist who darkens the mood of every scene she's in while Gluttnutt is a childish king whose Third-Person Person mannerism bring levity every time he's onscreen.
• Vile Villain, Saccharine Show: While Psycutlery is, for most part, a silly game with quirky characters and dialogue, things get real dark when these two villains show up:
  • First, we have the Distortion itself. It's an Eldritch Abomination who threatened to destroy Geozaic 500 years before it got sealed away into the Astray Abyss. Once it breaks free, not only does it try to destroy Geozaic again, but the whole universe as well.
  • There's also Dr. DeVoide AKA the Mother of Teleportation. She subjected Darkles, an unicorn to a torturous experiment to test her Teleportals before manipulating Terra Zaic into using her psychic powers to power them up to make sure they're safe for transportation. When she returns 450 years later, DeVoide does everything she could to gain more power, whether it be trying to crash Astranura into Geozaic to absorb the Distortion or forcing Lillian to fight some of her loved ones to extract the psychic energy from her.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Because nobody knew about her crimes, Dr. DeVoide is regarded as a hero by many citizens of Geozaic for providing them Teleportals and for sealing away the Distortion for 500 years.
• Where It All Began: Epoch Heights starts out as a simple world with only the tutorial level present. However, it also houses the final two levels in the game once Lillian returns to Geozaic to get rid of the Distortion once and for all.
• Womb Level: Once Lillian defeats Shoozok, she goes inside its body to retrieve the Mayor of Birchbark Ridge but not without having to deal with Shoozok Too and its larvae.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: As a result of Dr. DeVoide manipulating her and attempting to Mind Control her pet frog Astranura, Terra Zaic became furious to the point she accidently creates the Distortion and tries to destroy everything, thinking that the doctor was everywhere. However, she feels guilty when she gets reminded that she was trying to destroy everything that's good in the universe.
• Zero-Effort Boss: In Hasty Buffet, Naillil can easily take down some bosses in one hit thanks to the paranormal entity possessing her spork.

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