"Gag Order" (filename being g518_v13_34730.swf) is a Flash game that was a Neopets sponsorship game. Its primary purpose was to advertise Disney's Toontown Online to users browsing the Neopets website.
Premise[]
This game's main objective was to defeat Cogs in order to rescue caged Toons.
Main Gameplay[]
The player starts at the main menu, which features a button to start the game, an instructions screen, a section explaining what Toontown Online is, and a section showing the USA Toontown trailer. There was also a button that would take the player to Toontown.com and give them 125 Neopoints, with the limit being 3 clicks a day for 125 NP each.
When pressing the "Start Game" button, the player is given the option between two game modes: Story Mode and Survival Mode. Story Mode progressed like a typical story mode game, whereas when you completed levels, you would progress in the linear story path and get closer to the ending. Story Mode had five levels in total. Survival Mode had you face off against all five of the Cogs from Story Mode, and in it the player's goal was to survive as long as possible and get a high score. Upon beating the last Cog in Survival Mode, which is The Big Cheese, Survival Mode will loop back to the first Cog, which is a Penny Pincher, but the levels will still continue to rise in number and difficulty endlessly as the player beats each level.
In order of level, the five Cogs in this game are:
- Penny Pincher
- Name Dropper
- Spin Doctor
- Corporate Raider
- The Big Cheese
Each Cog had a corresponding Toon that the player had to rescue. In order of level, the five Toons in this game are:
- King Snorkelspeed
- Nuttypretzel
- Slumpy Zippenbumble
- Noisy Supertwist
- Mac Fiddlefingers
These Toons were not NPCs in Toontown Online. It currently isn't known who exactly these Toons are, but judging by the way they are named, they are either Toons created by regular players or they are random Toons styled to look like player-made Toons. Deep within the game's code, actual NPCs from Toontown Online are listed as Toons to rescue alongside the Toons that are used in the game. This is because the NPCs were replaced by the player-styled Toons at some point during the game's development.
In order of assumed level based on the order they're listed in within the game's code, the list of replaced NPC Toons are:
- Flippy
- Lil' Oldman
- Professor Pete
- Shelly Seaweed
- Baker Bridget
In one screenshot of the game, Flippy can be seen as a caged Toon. Interestingly however, he is seen on level two, the Name Dropper's level, which contradicts where his name is listed in the coding of the game. Flippy could also be seen as a caged Toon on the thumbnail/play button images of the game.
When starting the game, the player could select one of three Toons to play as. The three Toons were a green cat, a maroon horse, and a citrine monkey. These three Toons, just like the caged Toons, were not NPCs in the actual game. The three Toons had no difference between each other gameplay-wise. The green cat appeared in 518_1_v1.swf, which was an advertisement for the game. The green cat also appeared in a header image related to the game.
The game was a puzzle game. Its gameplay had the player match up the gag icons in order to attack one of the five Cogs that could be seen on the right side of the screen underneath the caged Toon. The player would match up the gag icons by moving their Toon left and right across the bottom of the screen, then pressing the down arrow key in order to make the gag icon(s) above them drop into their hands. By pressing the up arrow key, the player could make their Toon throw the gag icons back up into the air. The player had to match a minimum of three gag icons in either a vertical or horizontal row in order to attack the Cog. The larger the amount of gag icons matched up at once, the stronger the player's attack would be on the Cog. Also, the larger gag icon match-ups earned the player more points. The match-ups didn't have to be in perfectly straight vertical or horizontal rows if the player had at least three of the gag icons in a straight vertical/horizontal row. They were allowed to have bends, but you couldn't match-up the gag icons diagonally. Each gag icon did different amounts of damage when matched up, with some gag icons having the same amount of damage as each other. The types of gag icons you could match up in the game were:
- Foghorn (3 damage when matched in a normal group of 3)
- Birthday Cake (6 damage when matched in a normal group of 3)
- Cream Pie (3 damage when matched in a normal group of 3)
- Fire Hose (6 damage when matched in a normal group of 3)
- Flower Pot (3 damage when matched in a normal group of 3)
- Anvil (6 damage when matched in a normal group of 3)
- Safe (9 damage when matched in a normal group of 3)
- Grand Piano (12 damage when matched in a normal group of 3)
When matching up gag icons, animations would play that corresponded to the type of gag that had been matched up. When matching up Birthday Cake or Cream Pie icons, the player's Toon would throw a Birthday Cake/Cream Pie gag at the Cog (producing a SPLAT noise not heard in the actual game). When matching up Fire Hoses, the player's Toon would squirt a Fire Hose gag at the Cog (producing the Seltzer Bottle splash noise heard in the actual game). In this game, the Fire Hose gag is gray, while in the actual game, it's tan when used but green on the gag icon. When matching up a Flower Pot, Anvil, Grand Piano, or Safe, the Toon would pull a lever and cause a Flower Pot, Anvil, Grand Piano, or Safe gag to fall on top of the Cog's head (all of the Drop gags produce the same sound that's made when a Safe hits a Cog in the actual game). The Drop gag animation for the Flower Pot, Anvil, Grand Piano, and Safe differs from the one in the actual game, as in the actual game, when using either a Flower Pot, Anvil, Grand Piano, or Safe, the Toon would pull out a button and push it, not pull a lever. When matching up a Foghorn, the Toon would blast the Foghorn loudly.
Grand Piano gag icons wouldn't start appearing until level four, and Foghorn icons wouldn't start appearing until level five.
In the game, some gag icons would have multipliers attached to them. When gag icons with multipliers were matched, they'd multiply the base damage by the amount shown on their multiplier icon. The largest multiplier was 4, while the smallest was 2.
Whenever the player would clear a level, the Cog would explode, and their Toon along with the rescued Toon would dance together. The dance animation is modeled after the dance animation from the actual game, however, unlike the actual game's dance animation, the Toons don't turn around in a 360 circle while they dance. The dance animation has other slight differences from the dance animation in the actual game, such as how the Toons kick their legs out at certain points in the animation and how the Resistance Salute fist gesture isn't incorporated into the dance animation.
The player would lose the game if they allowed the gag icons to reach the bottom of the screen. Every couple of seconds or so, the game would create a new row of gag icons that would push the existing rows downward towards the bottom of the screen, so the player had to make sure they moved fast enough so that the oncoming rows wouldn't overtake them. Upon losing, the game would play the "WAH WAH WAH" sound effect that could be heard in the actual game. The game over screen had different text depending on how high the player's score was.
Ending[]
Upon defeating the last Cog in Story Mode, the player was rewarded with the ending. The player's Toon and all of the freed Toons danced together, the game congratulated the player, and the Sellbot HQ background transformed into a Toontown Central street background. The congratulatory text that was intended for the ending would read,"Congratulations! You Rescued All The Toons!" along with the standard level clear "You defeated (cog) and rescued (toon)" message and the player's score.
Music[]
The game completely lacked music. However, it did have sound effects, with some being from Toontown Online and others coming from a different source.
Links of Origin[]
This game is stored in the link (http://swf.neopets.com/games/g518_v13_34730.swf).
Trivia[]
- The title of the game is a play on the term "gag order", which is a legal order that prohibits certain information from being released to the public or another group.
- When using the Foghorn Gag, the sound effect used is the Aoogah sound effect from Toontown Online rather than the Foghorn sound effect.
- The game may possibly be based around the Senior V.P. Sellbot's battle, as the game takes place in Sellbot Headquarters and includes hanging, caged Toons just like the V.P. battle.
Gallery[]
