Super Freaks 1 Ultimate Edition 3.0
A downloadable game for Windows and Linux
Many years ago, when I was a dorky 12 year old in 6th grade, I made Super Freaks 1. It was awful in every way, but I loved it like a son.
Over the past several years, Super Freaks 1 wound up undergoing so many updates and overhauls that it's become a Ship of Theseus, and arguably isn't even the same game anymore. It's now a surprisingly modern platformer, with actual level design, weirdly advanced graphical features (including the ability to play the game at any framerate), and most importantly, a robust co-op feature. Four players can tackle this silly game together, armed with drop-in/drop-out multiplayer, a NSMB style bubble, and an optional Knuckles Chaotix style rubber band tether. There are also over 20 playable characters (most of which need to be unlocked).
As of version 3.0, there are now three story modes:
Super Freaks Story
The Super Freaks must take back the galaxy's supply of Unlimit Energy from their enemy Kranion. This is the normal story mode. The freaks share hearts as hitpoints; you can get more via collecting Yorbs and Hearts, and you can set how many hearts you have before entering the level.
Bad Guys Story
Kranion is forced to team up with his eccentric brother Sticky in order to get his castle back from an impostor! In this mode, your hearts are replaced with ego meters. They'll slowly drain, but fill them up all the way and you can become invincible!
Uncle Swordsman Story
After all the hoopla earlier, the Super Freaks and their skeletal enemies take a vacation. But while Uncle Swordsman and his weird friend the One Eyed Bandit are having a BBQ, Kranion and Sticky's dad Marrow Prime comes out of retirement--and he's stronger than both of them! In this story, collecting yorbs fills up an aura that allows you to run super fast and jump super high. Zoom around levels like crazy in the fastest paced mode yet!
As of version 1.1, you can now import custom characters with our new Freakloader technology, courtesy of defnotreal. The Gamebanana mod page is here: Super Freaks 1 Ultimate Edition | SF1UE | Mods & Resources (gamebanana.com)
There are several challenge modes which you will unlock as you progress through the game. You'll unlock a free play mode, a randomized endless mode, a boss rush mode, and a few speedrun modes.
If you’re on the fence about playing this game, AlmyriganHero (creator of the excellent Frebbventure) made a video review about the game’s SAGE 2022 demo. It is very honest about the high points and flaws (all of which I've fixed since, since this was a whole year before release), and in the end, gave the game a great score (spoilers, I know):
Game by:
SuperFreaksDev
Characters and World by:
SuperFreaksDev and Kingnormal
Soundtrack by:
philRaco and SuperFreaksDev (but mostly phil)
Assistant Programmers:
defnotreal and JorJoe05
Additional Art:
EngineerKappa (Promotional Art seen above, Freaky Freak Painting in Cool n Chill Caverns)
Metalefactor (Cinge edibles death pose)
More credits in-game!
Download
Install instructions
Super Freaks 1 Ultimate Edition is available for Windows and Linux (kindly provided by JorJoe05). The Windows build is available as a YYC (recommended as it is faster) and VM build. If Windows Defender deletes the YYC build while you're playing it, please use the VM build instead. As far as the Linux version, I've been told that not only does it run flawlessly on a Steam Deck, but the 16:10 aspect ratio (which can be enabled in the visual settings) fits the screen perfectly.
I would love to provide a Mac build in the future, and I technically can, I just don't have a MacBook to use. It DOES work well with WINE though, so you can play on Mac and Linux that way if you so choose.
Development log
- 3.0.328 days ago
- 3.0 LAUNCHAug 30, 2024
- 3.0 is almost here (+ SAGE plans)Aug 21, 2024
- GameBanana sucks =(Jan 05, 2024
- Uncle Swordsman Story First Look (3.0)Dec 23, 2023
- 2.0 IS HERE!!!!Dec 08, 2023
- Villain Story Mode (Coming Soon!)Nov 12, 2023
- v1.1.2 - Finally the Mod Page + Freakloader FixesOct 31, 2023
Comments
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Your honor, it's peam
Your honor, I counted and I have 28 teeth in my mouth. Life is good
Peak gaming
Hey no pressure or anything but if you aren't playing Super Freaks 1 Ultimate Edition RIGHT NOW I'LL F-
WE'RE freaks
How to defy death (or more like a bug report)
1. Get squished with 95%-ish heart filled
2. Get something else squished & get a heart
3. Have something hit your flying corpse
4. Get disappointed by the fact that unlike Battle Garegga you don't get anything cool for doing this except for bragging rights
Gaming.
Gaming.
Gaming.
Gaming.
THIS IS FREAKY!
I will be making a Super Freaks fan game about the funny and stupid. like John K style
hello Superfreaksdev
this is so real
I beaten this game the other day and it was extremely good! The level design is clever and the characters are full of charm. The story is the best kind of silly too. I just love that Kranion took over the worlds because he's salty over an old racing game.
I'M FREAKS
Y'all ever just
yeah all the time lmfao
my nards hurt
cummy ache
Hi SuperFreaksDev
ayyyyy whaddup
This game is peak, or should I say, freak
Rating: freaks/freaks
A solid platformer with fun multiplayer and a goofy yet carefully-considered aesthetic. Proud to have helped playtest this.
Thanks for freaking out!!!
i really liked when scruffy said "the", extremely inspiring
I cried every time I can't wait for Super Freaks 5ever
smh took 23 years to release
pensive emoji real -_- John "Scruffy" Super Freaks taking too long
this lookin kinda epic
REAL 👀
Guess what, SuperFreaksDev? I've uploaded a project on my itch.io page! Check it out if you can!
this game is really fun I liked the gameplay and artstyle but I have 2 questions how do you erase your save data. And can you redo mapped inputs, like if you mapped Z to left
Glad to hear you enjoyed it!
I'm currently in the middle of redoing the controls entirely with a better remapping menu, that should be fixed next update. I'm pretty close to a 5.2, when I get some more free time I should be able to finish that quickly and drop it here. As for erasing your save data I don't have an option for that yet but I'll add one soon. For now you'll have to go to the %appdata% folder and delete it but I'll add that option next update!
Ok thank you for the reply will do
Just got around to playing your demo!
The controls feel tight and the gameplay is solid. I really like how you had something new to introduce in each of the demo levels, so that kept the demo feeling fresh the whole way through, and each of the levels was able to stand out from all the others. The visuals are quite clean and pleasing to look at as well! Some of the levels being labeled as "secret" do make me curious if you have plans to include future levels with branching paths in the full game, as everything here is linear, and I don't really see room where you could hide exits to secret levels. Overall, this is a very promising demo that feels very refined compared to your games from the past!
Wall-jumping and attacking large enemies are the only things I really found issue with. There doesn't seem to be any way to disengage from a wall if you touch one while airborne, so you either have to wall-jump or wait until you slide down the wall. This isn't a significant issue in any of the current level designs, but it was something I noticed that felt off. The loss of control when attacking the large enemy or the boss make sense to me since it's intended to push you away, but their hitboxes are so large that I got stuck inside them and ended up taking hits fairly often. I ended up doing a ton of damage to the boss in a short time because I would get stuck bouncing back and forth inside the hitbox, which was pretty funny, but it definitely didn't feel intended.
Oh yeah, I had one more comment about the flying enemy that shoots fireballs on the Skyway level; there's no visual warning before it fires another projectile, and although it's not really an issue since its attack is on a consistent timer, I feel like adding an additional sprite frame right before it attacks would be an appreciated warning and detail.
Thanks for playing!! I really appreciate it. I'm kinda surprised I was able to make something that solid, so that's good to hear.
The secret levels are basically what you unlock with the trophies. If you get all the trophies in a world, you unlock one, and all of them are loosely based on the original game's level layouts.
As far as all the stuff you mentioned, I can definitely fix those. I just changed the wall jump so you dismount if you let go of the wall, though there's a small buffer so it doesn't feel finnicky. I'm not sure how I'll fix the large enemy hitbox thing but I think I have a few decent ideas, because I got stuck a few times too. I'll just need to figure out how to properly push you out of the hitbox.
Yo, are you that Scruffy guy who put up videos on YouTube, like, ages ago? I have memories of watching your stuff when I was just a kid, too, and you were one of my inspirations to pick up game dev for myself.
It all started coming back to me once I saw your artstyle and characters here on itch. It's nice to see that you're still going! I'll have to check this out. The gameplay looks pretty nice from the video!
That’s me! I sat down, made a new channel, rebranded a bit, took things back to the drawing board, and I’m glad I did because I have a much more focused style now. I put aside that stupidly ambitious game (now known as Super Freaks 4ever) aside for a bit to do this first for the practice. I never thought I’d be an inspiration for anybody so that really makes my day hearing that, thank you!
How have you been? It’s probably been a few years since my last channel, I’m curious as to what you’ve been up to since then?
You're welcome! I remember finding your channel back in the era when the YoyoGames Sandbox was still a thing, and I had been wanting to try and put something together with the old Game Maker 7. I was a pretty clueless kid at the time and didn't really know what I was doing, but I looked up to a bunch of people who were putting out fun stuff and was hoping that I could be like them someday. I distinctly remember you had some scrolling shooter game called Strato-Scruffy that I thought was really cool with all the unique bosses, so I guess you could say that my goal was to make something at least comparable to that, haha.
Pretty much everything I made at the time was hot garbage since I was a dumb kid and didn't really understand a lot of the stuff in Game Maker's drag-and-drop interface either. At some point I decided to give up on programming a game at the time, and I went off to use some of the PC RPG Makers for a few years while mainly working on my art and spriting ability.
I did eventually return and picked up GameMaker Studio 1.4, but I still didn't ever share anything I made with the public for two years or so. Eventually, I guess something clicked, and I started using GML to make new games instead of the drag-and-drop interface. I finally started liking my output well enough to make an account here and posted a scrolling shooter back in 2017 (Dark Space).
Since then, I started feeling more of a passion to continue with game dev, and I've been making more games in GMS 1.4. I finished my proudest project (Moth to the Moon) late last year, but my brother and I recently started planning to add original music and overhauled sound effects to the game. A few things are done for that, but nothing that's ready to go public yet. I'm hoping to at least get a trailer out when all the new sound effects are ready. Aside from that, I've also been trying to put out some smaller games on occasion to keep my abilities fresh.