Review - Penny Larceny: Gig Economy Supervillain

Developer: Fiction Factory Games

Publisher: Fiction Factory Games

Available on: PC

As a fan of the Arcade Spirits visual novels, I was looking forward to checking out Penny Larceny: Gig Economy Supervillain when I got the code for it. Fiction Factory Games has put out some pretty solid stories of friendship, romance, and fulfilling dreams your protagonist didn't know they had. What made those games appealing was a combination of the art, world-building, and deeply written characters.

Booting up Penny Larceny, I had high hopes.

Great Concept, Execution?

Our protagonist Penny Larceny is a slight departure from previous Fiction Factory Games titles. Instead of a customizable character, we're put into the shoes of a Penny Larceny, a career criminal. Like Arcade Spirits, Penny Larceny lives in an alternate universe where superheroes and villains are the norm. Penny Larceny is a freelance supervillain henchperson who is looking to make some money for everyday life costs but the supervillain gig economy is all being managed through an app. The central point of the game? Playthrough a series of heists and capers for different supervillains and make bank.

Now this is where the game should get interesting. Executing heists includes a series of options and choices that lead to how many stars you get for each finished heist. Figuring out which options are best is a matter of just doing the thing really and seeing how it all plays out. However, you only get 3 heists before you have to commit to a supervillain. At least that's what it seems like is happening. As you play through, you learn there's something shadier happening behind the app being used to pick out these heists. The only way to uncover that is to replay the game and try different heists for each of the supervillains and unlock more clues.

The Execution....

Now, here's where Penny Larceny doesn't quite hit the mark for me; the supervillains are not interesting enough for me to want to keep working for them. They're also not interesting enough to me as romances. In fact, the only possible interesting romance I ran into in the game is a superhero who can see possible futures. The only problem is that I have to make multiple playthroughs to pursue this route and while she's interesting, the rest of the game is just not interesting enough to make me want to keep playing to pursue her. The heists are convoluted and often made me just want to click through picking whatever options just to see what happens but not in a curious way; rather in a 'let's just get through this way'. This makes me sad because I am a fan of heists in film, games, etc. Just not in this game.

World, Characters, Aesthetic

Penny Larceny is set in a comic book-style world with superheroes and villains running around in a gig-style economy, not unlike The Boys but without the grit and danger that makes that show so interesting. The art often peaks into comic book-like stylization, and I kind of wish they had gone all in on the stylized choices with some of the old comic book shading and such, but they put it in here and there in such a way that it feels a bit random at points.

While other Fiction Factory Games gave me plenty of characters to love and be annoyed by, I had a mostly indifferent interest in the characters Penny Larceny presented. There were 3 supervillains who each had different styles of villainy, usually complicated by their motivations: A cult leader who was just bored, a computer that wanted to destroy all humans but wasn't sure why, a mad scientist who just wanted to save lives but capitalism ruined that. While the game tried to complicate these characters and their motivations, it often ran into the problem of playing a little too hard into archetypes in a way that made each character feel like they were trying too hard to be 3-dimensional.

Verdict

Now, I'm not gonna say Penny Larceny is not Fiction Factory Games' worst game, but I will say they do have better games on offer worth checking out. While Penny Larceny was a good attempt, it just wasn't quite it for me from a studio I've enjoyed. I don't know if that will change later, after all, who knows? Maybe I'll feel the need to replay the game more than twice to uncover its secrets but for now: