Videogame: Giana Sisters Twisted Dreams
An official 2012 sequel to the original The Great Giana Sisters
A mysterious crystal appears in Giana and Maria's bedroom, creating a portal which sucks up Maria and takes her to the dream world. Giana gives chase.
The game is the first game by Black Forest Games, a company consisting mostly of people who also took part in the development of the (quite unsuccessful) Giana Sisters DS
. The development of the game was crowd-funded through a Kickstarter campaign
under the working title Project Giana
Gameplay-wise it stays true to its 2D platformer roots, but it uses a modern 3D graphic engine. A key gameplay element is Giana's ability to change between her normal cutesy form and her pyrokinetic punk form at will. When she does this, the dream world around her changes in the opposite way. While Cute Giana plays in a creepy nightmare, Punk Giana plays in a Sugar Bowl
world. However, the graphics aren't the only difference between the two worlds. A lot of game elements behave different depending on what world Giana is currently in: platforms appear and disappear, gates open or close, elevators change directions and enemies change their behavior patterns.
Twisting the dream world also changes the game's music. Cute Giana's dreamworld features music by the original game's composer, Chris Hülsbeck, while Punk Giana's dreamworld features music by Machinae Supremacy
As of September 11, 2013, a standalone expansion named Rise of the Owlverlord
has been made available on Steam
and became available to play on September 25. A sequel has been announced and Machinae Supremacy is on board to return.
This game provides examples of:
- 100% Completion: Plenty.
- Stars. Requires dying less than three times in levels and finding at least 90% of the gems for maximum score.
- Gems. Master Gems found, they unlock artworks and concept arts.
- Owl Trophies. Beat each levels High Score in Score Attack.
- Rabbit Trophies. Finish the levels on or below par time.
- Advancing Boss of Doom: Gurglewocky.
- All Just a Dream
- Antagonist Title: Rise of the Owlverlord.
- Art Evolution: The game received several updates that enhanced graphics and some controlling goofs. And as a straighter example, the game is considered by many people light years better than its predecessors.
- Ascended Extra\All There in the Manual: Maria has a lot more dialogue with Giana in the comic adaptation.
- Back for the Dead: If you're not familiar with the game, it makes you think it's invoking this trope with Maria, when the Gurglewocky swallows her whole and all, but it ultimately turns out to be an Averted Trope at the end.
- Background Boss: Octor Freud and Gurglewocky
- Badass Adorable: Giana. Cute as a button, wrecks shit up.
- Boss Arena Idiocy: Hansel and Gretel's arena comes conveniently with a spike device that stabs upwards whenever you transform.
- Boss-Only Level: The final level of Rise of Owlverlord.
- Boss Warning Siren which comes accompanied with Boss Subtitles
- Bottomless Pits: They are usually marked with multiple death head signs. Some which aren't either means death or another hidden path with more gems.
- Bubbly Clouds: The 'Heaven'-themed areas
- Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Lots. Yellow Gems can be picked up only by Cute Giana, and Red Gems by Punk Giana.
- Mechanical platforms that have a red or yellow light on them can be manipulated by world-switching.
- Swimmable water is blue (bright and clear for Punk Giana, pale and somewhat murky for Cute Giana), while deadly water is either sickly green (for Cute Giana) or bright, unnatural, grape-punch purple (for Punk Giana).
- Checkpoint: Plenty in every level even in Standard Mode. Hardcore has none, however.
- Christmas Special: In the form of a stand-alone freebie downloadable Christmas-themed level, complete with snow, Christmas trees, snowmen, and enemies with Santa hats.
- Collision Damage: From every enemy around. Giana can also do the same by hurling herself in flames against them.
- Cowboy Bebop at His Computer: There are an awful lot of reviewers out there who believe the 'Sisters' portion of the title means that Cute Giana and Punk Giana are sisters rather than being the same person.
- Damsel in Distress: Maria becomes this and it's up to Giana to save her.
- Derivative Differentiation: If you were to play this game without any knowledge of the previous games, you wouldn't be able to tell that the series started off as a blatant Super Mario Bros. 1 clone.
- Difficulty Spike: Whereas the majority of the first world is essentially a cakewalk, Level 1-6 and the rest of the game isn't.
- Doomy Dooms of Doom: Level 3-4, Temple Doomdidoom.
- Double Jump: Cute Giana's twirl jump.
- Dream Land: Where the game takes place.
- Dual-World Gameplay: You switch between a cute and cuddly candyland and a gothic, borderline terrifying overworld. Giana also switches personalities based on these worlds (between Cute and Punky).
- Easy-Mode Mockery: Beating a level in Easy will not unlock the next level in any other mode (Standard, Time Attack, Score Attack), also you will not be able to earn stars for ranks and unlock boss levels in Standard.
- Everything's Better with Spinning: Cute Giana can twirl to glide over obstacles.
- Evil Overlooker: The final level has Gurglewocky ominously glaring at the screen.
- Excuse Plot: Your sister was pulled into a dream world and has been captured by a dragon. Go rescue her!
- Face-Heel Turn: Somewhat. Word of God states that Giana became sick and tired of anything that Tastes Like Diabetes (which used to be her fancy), and would now prefer to stomp anything cuddly into the ground. Mind you, she's still good.
- Fake Difficulty: Although not often, there are traps and certain segments full of enemies that will kill an unwarned player at least once.
- Fiery Redhead: Giana's punk form.
- Final Boss Preview: Gurglewocky the dragon makes an appearance in the first level.
- Fingerless Gloves: Giana's punk form.
- Freaky Is Cool: Giana feels at home in what some would call the nightmarish landscape, thus she appears as her normal bubbly-looking self there. However, it appears the dreamy landscape is so sickeningly sweet that she turns into Punk Giana in a desire to stomp everything into the ground.
- Gotta Catch Them All: Hidden Master Gems, which unlocks artworks.
- Grimy Water: If it's not blue, then it's not okay for you! note
- The Goomba: Owls / Demons. Yes, they are the goomba. They are the same enemy, which changes its sprite depending on the world you are currently in.
- Goomba Stomp
- Guide Dang It: Minor one: You still can jump if you walk off an edge, that may help in crossing certain places or even save you from death. This, however, was corrected as the hints in the loading screen may inform you, and in The Rise of Owlverlord it tells you straight out.
- Harder Than Hard: Hardcore note and Uber-Hardcore modes note .
- Instant Awesome, Just Add Ninja: One of the Owlverlord's two forms is a ninja form. It's his nastier form too as the throwing stars he chucks at you spread out and are harder to dodge than his cannon shots. Add in a homing projectile and you've got yourself a genuine Bullet Hell on your hands.
- Invincible Minor Minion: Armored Demowls. They're basically moving spikes, expect to find a lot of these on descent and uprising segments.
- Little Miss Badass: Giana in her punk form, though a case can be argued for Cute Giana as well, who treats the nightmare world like a playground.
- Mascot Mook: The Owls grew into this pretty quickly when Project Giana was announced.
- Magic Skirt: Maria's skirt stays up while she is dangling upside down in the first level.
- Marathon Level: The levels become progessively longer with each stage. Level 1-5 is the first to truly feel like this.
- Meaningless Lives: Played with. You may die as many times as you can; however, in Standard Mode, dying too many times prevents you from achieving a good rank, in Hardcore you get thrown to the beginning of the level and Über-Hardcore dying means Game Over.
- Mercy Invincibility: After losing the shield.
- Mercy Mode: The Easy difficult added after an update. The game is still Nintendo Hard, but on Easy, certain platforms will appear to help the player and even avoid death, there will be less traps, certain enemies will be slower and invincible mooks will appear much less often, and finally, bosses will have extra shields and something else to aid the player.
- Modesty Shorts: Giana in cute form.
- Multiform Balance: The gameplay is pretty much built around this trope. Switching back and forth between Giana's cute and punk forms at exactly the right moment is the key to solving many puzzles.
- Nightmare Fetishist: Almost literally; Giana is much happier while she's immersed in the more nightmarish-looking world.
- Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: The Owlverlord switches between a pirate form with a cannon built into his peg leg and a ninja form who spams throwing stars.
- Nintendo Hard: The game becomes progressively harder after the Difficulty Spike. Once it let your hands go you'll be facing long, gruelling levels that requires fast reflexes and keen eyes to achieve the highest ranks.
- Offscreen Start Bonus: A few stages have hidden gems right above the initial location.
- Palette Swap: Maria is still Giana with green hair, but now with a pink dress to boot. Goody. Although, they could be identical twins.
- Particularly egregious in that the title screen shows the sisters in silhouettes, which might make you think you might as well be looking at two Gianas.
- Normal demowls share the same model with different colors.
- Path of Most Resistance: Most of gems are in hidden paths throughout each stage, if you are aiming for the 5-Star Rank you'll have to find them, to spice things a little more some of the hidden segments are very difficult to navigate without dying once.
- Perky Goth: Punk Giana. Cute Giana is this as well, as the Kickstarter Web site describes her as liking things spooky (even gaining more powers as the dream she's in gets more morbid.)
- Platform Hell: Doesn't seem obvious in the early stages, but the game takes a massive difficulty spike fairly quickly.
- Playing with Fire: Punk Giana can curl up and turn into a literal human fireball in her world, allowing her to bust through bricks and scale walls.
- Puzzle Boss: Almost no boss can be directly harmed by Giana's attack, instead she must use something to damage them.
- Hansel & Gretel: A device which raises a spike as Giana swap between her forms must be used to hit the boss's head(s).
- Octor Freud: The only boss that actually can be harmed by Giana, however only one part of him is vulnerable and the floor will change with Giana's form forcing the player to be very careful while dodging his attacks to avoid dying instantly from the Bottomless Pits.
- Gurglewocky: In order to gain a way to damage him, you must first let him spit a meteorite that homes at you constantly. When he uses the flaming breath around the room, change to the other form, "disabling" it, and then kick it to his face.
- The Owlverlord: In order to hurt him, you must dodge his attacks until he throws a seeking projectile. Then you must survive both the seeking blade and the shots/ninja stars he fires at you until he changes form and then you must trick the homing projectile into him while still dodging all the stuff he throws at you.
- Puzzle Platformer: Certain segments will require the usage of Giana's transformation and a bit of thinking to proceed and/or not die.
- Rank Inflation: Up to Five Stars in Standard.
- Scenery Porn
- Sequence Breaking: With some cleverness, there are segments that you can entirely skip by using Giana's powers.
- Single-Use Shield: The Pink Gems. Obviously, it doesn't protect Giana from insta-kill hazards like Bottomless Pits.
- Soundtrack Dissonance: The music is based on your form, not the world, so you get hard electropunk music for cutesy, non-threatening terrain and Mario-esque retro chiptunes for nightmare landscapes.
- As of an update, now it is possible to hear only the Punk and Cute music styles.
- Spikes of Doom
- Super Drowning Skills: Some bodies of water kill Giana instantly when she touches them, but...
- Suspicious Video Game Generosity: The game gives you a Single-Use Shield before the bosses. Expect shields during the most gruelling parts of levels too.
- Swallowed Whole: Maria gets swallowed by Gurglewocky the dragon in level 1. She remains inside there for the entire game until rescued after the final boss battle.
- Tactical Suicide Boss: Octor Freud, the second boss would be invulnerable if it didn't try to slap you with its one vulnerable tentacle from time to time.
- Gurglewocky must be taken down by using the combination of two of his attacks against him.
- The Owlverlord must be taken down by his own seeking projectile which only hurt him if he's not in the form that fired it.
- Videogame Settings: Punk and Cute forms:
- Wakeup Call Boss: The very first boss, Hansel and Gretel, is this. The boss is quite fast and has a particularly nasty attack it uses whenever it is hit and becomes faster and more difficult to dodge as the battle goes on.
- Wall Jump: Punk Giana's dash attack when used near a wall. Additionally, she can wall jump normally with help of bookcases or a wall with plants.
- Weakened by the Light: The only way to kill the ghosts is to lure them into pillars of light.
- You Gotta Have Green Hair: Maria does.