GameSpy recently posted a preview of Hothead Games' Penny Arcade Adventures: On The Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness. Based on the characters from the Penny Arcade comic strip, the episodic adventure game will allow players to create a character and step into an adventure with Tycho and Gabe.

From the preview:

The game itself is a blend of Super Mario RPG, Paper Mario and The Secret of Monkey Island. You spend a lot of time rambling around, pawing through the environment until something attacks you. Combat is handled in a turn-based fashion with some extra interactivity thrown in by way of pulling the right trigger just before an enemy's attack in order to block. It's a little bit of Final Fantasy gameplay with a pretty coat of cel-shaded paint that blends into an overall style that should be very familiar to fans of the webcomic.

The reference to Monkey Island isn't thrown in willy-nilly, because the PA boys actually contracted that game's lead designer, Ron Gilbert, to help them design the adventure-based side of the gameplay. Though our brief taste of Rain-Slick Precipice didn't provide a great deal of contact with the elements that Gilbert worked on, there was some evidence of his touch in the bits and bobs scattered about the environment just begging to be clicked on... or, rather, have the A button pressed while standing next to.

The writing is every bit as sardonic and explicit as you'd expect from Penny Arcade. It's clear that Penny Arcade Adventures has been meticulously made to conform to Gabe's and Tycho's rigorous standards of offensive hilarity, right down to the inclusion of a certain fruit-abusing device that cannot actually be named here.

GameSpy: Penny Arcade Adventures Preview

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Penny Arcade Adventures (add to watch list)

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