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Why A Game Originally Prototyped For Game Boy Color Is Going Head-To-Head With GTA 6
Grand Theft Auto 6 launches on November 19, and most studios have been giving its release date a wide berth for obvious reasons. Who would want to go up against Rockstar's giant?
Apparently, two games: a port of The Binding of Isaac , and a release from the only developer/publisher who would commit to doing such a thing as a bit: Devolver Digital.
Doinksoft, Devolver's in-house studio, has made a Game Boy Color-style 2D platformer called Volvy's Adventure: Reslimed that it's releasing on PC on November 19. The studio and publisher have naturally leaned into the absurdity of the release date with the game's announcement, to the point where (given Devolver's history) we had to check in and make sure this was, in fact, a real video game.
It is, and no, it wasn't originally made as a marketing stunt: it's silly, but sincere. Over email, Doinksoft designer Britt Brady and Devolver co-founder and marketing head Nigel Lowrie [the responses were attributed jointly to both] told me that Brady actually pitched the game to Devolver "well before" GTA 6 was a part of the conversation, by sending Devolver HQ a package containing an Analog Pocket and a custom Game Boy Color cartridge with a fully playable level of Volvy's Adventure .
Though the game was prototyped for GBC and was originally planned to be released for the system just as a fun, small thing, the team agreed it deserved a bigger platform and ported it to PC, with a release on modern consoles planned for later on.
Separately, within Devolver, the team had joked about releasing a game—no specific one—on the same day as GTA 6 . "As time went by and as it became clear that Volvy was destined to become a proper game, it felt inevitable that the world’s greatest gaming mascot should be the chosen one to face off with GTA 6 ."
There's a level of unintentional irony here that I can appreciate, as the embargo for their game's news lifted right as a bunch of GTA 6 embargoes also expired, meaning the announcement of Volvy's Adventure took place alongside several hundred GTA -related headlines.
Devolver and Doinksoft have committed, though. "There is no doubt GTA 6 will have the spotlight before, during and after November 19 but it’s not for everyone, or releasing on Steam the same day, so we figure there’s a bit of ‘counter-programming’ that may work in Volvy ’s favor."
Volvy is, of course, the official Devolver Digital mascot, a rat-looking sort of thing with one large hand and one small hand (???) that Devolver has used as a parody of both mainstream mascot characters as well as the tendency of companies to try to "bring back" classic mascots of varying popularity. Volvy's appeared in several Devolver-published games now, though, turning him from a parody of a mascot into an actual one, albeit one without the fame of Mario or the absurd pseudo-fame of a character like Gex.
But yes, Volvy's Adventure is a real, retro-style 2D platformer. As Lowrie and Brady describe it: "[Volvy] is centered entirely on kinetic force, chain reactions, dynamic combos, and intense destruction. His expansive moveset naturally keeps him airborne, chaining combos that keep him from ever needing to set foot on land. Volvy boasts a large, versatile toolkit mapped to minimal, highly intuitive inputs. The control scheme allows players to easily execute complex, momentum-based destructive sequences without ever having to fight the controls, prioritizing expression and continuous movement."
Apparently there are four worlds' worth of levels, and Volvy is trying to rescue his kidnapped friends, and there's a wizard who unleashed some slime. I'm still fuzzy on the details, but I think that's maybe part of the goof here. The pair's statement concluded, "If only we knew about the GTA 6 nudist colony so we could have put that in Volvy’s Adventure: Reslimed too." What can you do!
I probably should have, you know, brought friends
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