Gumboy Crazy Adventures was our 2006 Independent Game of the Year.  Unfortunately, many people never actually played the game.  They downloaded it, but due to a horrible tutorial system that didn't even call itself such, most players quickly became bored of the game without goals and quit before actually leaving the tutorial and playing the real game.

Those who didn't play further missed out, and while we'd heartily recommend taking advantage of the new $9.99 price tag, Cinemax is preparing another way for gamers to enter the world of the Gumboy.

In fact, that world isn't a world of a single Gumboy anymore, but of many Gumboys.  We recently got a chance to check out the up-coming Gumboy Tournament, and are excited to report back on what we've seen so far.

Gumboy Tournament, as the name suggests is primarily a multi-player game.  There are single-player levels, but they simply put you through a series of missions against computer players.  Unlike the first game, which was full of different challenges involving pushing and focusing on precision and skill in movement, Gumboy Tournament decreases the types of game play while also simplifying the controls.

The game is built around multiplayer action of four different types.  Reverse Tag, Capture the Flag, Diamond Collecting, and Racing.  The modes can be played multiplayer split-screen on the same computer, or over LAN or Internet.

Each type of game is fairly self-explanatory.  Reverse Tag rewards players for avoiding contact with other players. Capture the Flag is a versus game of capturing the other team's flag while guarding and recovering your own. Diamond Collecting pits players against each other as they try to collect diamonds of different values as they appear in specific spots on the level. Racing is well, racing.

Up to 9 players can play in most of the game types with the ability to add bots of different difficulty levels into the mix for when you're struggling to fill all 9 slots.  Unfortunately we weren't able to test Internet play in our preview, but the bots performed admirably and created a constant hectic challenge.

There were two parts of Gumboy Adventures that really made it shine: the game play and the visuals.  Gumboy Tournament follows suit and even improves on the original in some instances.

Game Play is the area where the most improvement can be seen.  In the original game, a tremendous amount of skill was required in order to complete the challenges.  The character's movements weren't quite as intuitive as they should have been, which made many of the challenges more difficult than they should have been.  Sometimes they even became a little frustrating.  Gumboy Tournament has really improved the feel of the controls.  You spend a lot less time trying to get your Gumboy to bounce the way you want him to, and more time getting to where you want to be.  This is aided by stages with less edges, better suiting Gumboy's  shape and abilities, and a change in the old  power-up system. 

Unlike the original game you won't morph into different modes to fly through the air and swim through the water.  Those forms are done away with, but the sticky ability from the original game, instead of being a power-up, is now something that you have all the time.  That certainly helps as the character always felt like he should have been able to climb walls and now he can...and it feels better than it did in the last game.

The levels are varied in the game, which leads to many unique challenges.  A favorite so far is the planetary levels.  On those levels you jump around from planet to planet, dealing with gravity and inverse controls as you jump from the top of one planet to the top of another.  The total number of different levels probably numbers over 20, with each carefully created with the same beautiful visual style of multiple layers of beautifully painted backgrounds that was so impressive in the original game. 

This time around the levels are broken into three styles, a honeycomb, grassy, and galactic.  The last style contains the most variety with the aforementioned romps through multiple planets as well as large single alien asteroids complete with multiple tunnels through the middle that make for exciting games of capture the flag and diamond collecting. 

While we definitely enjoyed the multiplayer games, and they were very well done, the more mainstream approach to the game takes away some of the weird quirkiness that made the original game a favorite.  The new game is shaping up as much easier to play and may have a greater draw than the original, but for fans looking for a continuation of the strange adventures of Gumboy, it should be noted that the new game is rolling down a different path.

The hardest part of any multiplayer-based game, especially in the world of Independent Games, is to get enough players on the servers for the online gaming to be fun.  That will certainly be a challenge for Gumboy Tournament, but with the much improved and simplified gameplay making the game more enjoyable, and visually stunning 2D graphics, things are looking very good so far.