What happens when you are out in the backyard with the kids and you find yourself periodically checking over your shoulder for evil wind-up toy mice bent on revenge? Or you find yourself down on one knee proposing to your girlfriend holding an [Onion Ring]?

The news is grim I'm afraid. It's definitely a case of Loony-it is.

Yes, Loony is back and in the sequel to the first Loonyland adventure by Hamumu Software, he has survived Halloween Hill and the treacherous Bonkula only to succumb to a blizzard in the Winter Woods. Now he's faced with a new foe as he must deal with the antics of the Baron von Frostburn and his minions.

With an introduction like that, it should be quite obvious that Loonyland2 isn't your "Traditional" RPG experience. The toe-tapping music and the quite colorful graphics immediately focuses the gameplay on an environment of family fun rather than trying to focus the player on the particle engine technology used, or how "life-like" the death screams of the monsters are.

The game world for the player to explore is quite vast and littered with various monsters and locations as you might expect. While most RPG games of this kind tend to herd your exploration somewhat by artificially restricting you based on your current level, Loonyland2 works a little bit differently here allowing you to pretty much travel anywhere in the gameworld. And you will travel. The game sports a number of around 50 quests that you can work on.

A large part of the gameplay is focused on the system of "skills" and "talents" which are accessible to the player. In short, a talent is an ability which improves the more it is used, independent of your level. Talents are sub-divided into three broad categories: Craft, Combat and Magic. The crafting talents allow you to do things like improve your movement speed, and mix different types of potions to use with the various reagents you can gather in the wilderness. You can even skill up the ability to haggle with vendors better, which is always welcome in any RPG. The Combat talents allow you to improve the various calculations used in determining how well you do in combat and defense. Lastly, the Magic talents are aimed at basically helping you to do things like cast your spells more efficiently, improve your casting speed, etc.

Skills, on the other hand, are directly tied to the current level of the player. Skills are also largely magic based, opening access to more powerful summoning spells as your level progresses. Players have five sub-categories of skills to focus on including: Passive, Attack, Throwing, Magic and More Magic skills. Passive skills are ones which are auto-used by the game without putting the player into a state of stress during combat. In other words, you don't need to time any keypresses or mouse acrobatics to take advantage of these skills. They allow you to do things like survive longer during battle, defend a little better, etc. The Attack skills are focused on making sure you do better in battle (go figure) while the Throwing skills are used to help you improve your axe tossing should you desire it. Finally, the two Magic skill areas are devoted to powering up the various spells available to you.

The game does a good job of patiently explaining what each and every skill and talent does, along with pointing out that once you do "spend" a skill point you cannot reverse the decision.

The various spells that are accessible to you throughout the game are also a collection of fun and enjoyable magi. The spell system is easy to learn and activated using the "A" key. Once activated, you can select which "family" of spell to cast using the left and right arrow keys, then find the individual spell you were looking within that family by using the up and down arrows. Once you've used the system a handful of times, it's easy to remember. However it would have been nice to somehow let the player know about the "A" key without having to look into the help menus to find this out. [Editor's Note: a notable piece of info here, the tips shown in the help menu only occur there if you have already been shown the tip, the tip that told us to do this apparently was inadvertently clicked through without being looked at...the game does let you know about the 'A' key, our mistake...]

As with most RPG's, the use of your equipment, skills and talents are all to avoid your avatar from suffering a terminal experience. However, to keep consistent with the rest of the game, death isn't annoying. There are no long pointless treks meant to waste your time while you recover your corpse, you don't suffer a gigantic loss of experience, and you don't lose any precious treasure that you've been collecting!

At the heart of this game, beats an adventure and RPG experience that the whole family can enjoy. For the first time in a long while, I didn't need to have my finger hovering over the minimize shortcut when my kids entered the room, and I didn't need to sneak in a game session during the wee hours of the night while everyone slept. In fact, my boys enjoyed dancing to the beats of the game's soundtrack, and had a blast just learning how to manipulate Loony and talk to the various NPC's that populate the game.

Graphics:
The art style of Loonyland2 is definitely unique and I found to be a fresh of breath air. The animation and sprite quality of the player and each monster is quite fluid and "natural" in feel. The wintery theme of the game came through quite well with the snow laden landscape and backgrounds that populate the world.

Sound:
The various tracks of background music is definitely a major benefit to this game. The musical selection is varied and sets the appropriate mood for the current location of the game. The sound effects are also crisp. There seems to have also been a lot of work put into creating some different voice-overs for the various NPC's that you encounter in the game world, and it pays off. Personally, I'm hoping in the future that Hamumu decides to release a CD soundtrack of the background tracks.

Gameplay:
The gameplay mechanics are in of itself not terribly different from other RPG's. You're still semi-grinding for loot and experience, with the primary goal of Killing Foozle. However, isn't that part of what draws RPG fans to begin with? The skill and talent systems do provide some additional ways to make the avatar your own, and it's neat to fiddle with the different potions you can craft.

Concept:
Loonyland2 takes a different path than most other Indie RPG titles. However this is done in a refreshing way. While the main goal is to ultimately Kill Foozle, you're at least exposed to a game that lets you have some fun while doing it.

Value:
Definitely a lot of value with this title. There's plenty of quests to work on, not to mention the replay value of Madcap Mode once you finish the game the first time around. The bottom line, is that any RPG I can use as an introduction for my boys is definitely worth the admission price alone.

Recommendation:
With a title like "Loonyland", it probably goes without saying that the storyline isn't meant to be a "serious" epic adventure but that's definitely part of the draw of this game. If you're a fan of the Diablo-style of RPG action games, then you may want to give this game a try as some basic real-time combat and loot collecting is involved. If you are a fan of the first Loonyland adventure, then I think you will be in for a real treat with this sequel, especially if you have younger children who you would like to expose to a fun, bloodbath-less RPG experience.