The story segment will be seperated based on the games.
World 1 did not come out with a story mode. Pretty much you play throough the levels and reach the boss room. The idea ism Fancy Pants went to explore the mountains and collect squiggles. A calm adventure that turned 180 degress after the hero accidentally fell into an Angry Penguins cave waking him up. The penguin attacked the hero and once defeated, the hero returned home.
World 2 was the first to add narrative. Fancy Pants participated in a Fancy Golfball game and performed greatly. Fancy Golfball is like golf but once you hit the ball you can continue and play it like soccer. Kicking/ heading the ball to reach the hole. Fancy pants scored and the Mayor of Squiggleville awarded the hero with
a tasty ice cream cone. fancy pants was excited and got the icecream. Out of the golf hole came an enormous Angry Rabbit and stole the hero's icecream. Fancy Pants was sad but the Mayor hypes up the hero by telling him to go after the rabbit for the sake of Justice, for Humanity and so that World 2 can have a plotline. And thus Fancy Pants
jumps in the hole determine to get the ice cream. Each level in the game is in honor of the person who helped him during development.
Will he gets his Ice cream in time, or did the rabbit at it?
World 3 decided to make a more serious plotline. For the first time, We re introduced to Fancy Pants little sister, Cutie Pants Girl. Fancy Pants wakes up after the Mayor knocks on his window claimming that the king requested his presence. Apparently Angry Bathtub Pirates commendeered the royal tub and he needs the hero. Fancy pants rushes out of his home and makes his way to the King.
He tells the hero that the pirates Vandalized the city with grafities and that they commandeered the pride of his entire kingdom, his royal King sized bathtub. Fancy Pants then leaves and make his way to the bathtub. The hero washes away the pirates from the tub and comes face to face with their Captain Rainbow beard. Fancy Pants defeats the Captain who managed to make his escape. He sees a
cat which he pets. The cat was Kaboodle, Fancy Pant's pet. Cutie Pants saw that and without thinking she rushes in and kicks the Captain knocking him out. The Captains crew saw this and decided to ditch their Captain and make Cutie their new captain and thus they kidnapped her. Fancy Pants then chase them over in order to save his little sister. Along the way he finds bottles with letters left by his
sister asking for help, but the more she remains with them the more it begins to grow on her.
What will the hero do againts Captain Cutie Pants?
Will Captain Rainbow Beard strike back?
What will happen?
I personally i enjoy the games. They re simple and enjoyable. There is not much to say about the World 1 story, it seems like a nice simple adventure. World 2 added a humorous plot and introduced us to NPCs and sports that exists within the world of Fancy Pants. The Plot of World 3 was the biggest at the time. It enriched the cast of the series, it
continued its unique humor and it included more "cutscenes". Not much to say here, the plot was never the reason people played Flash games but having it is always huge plus for me.
I will once again be seperating the gameplay segment based on the Worlds from which they appeared. So keep in mind everything introduced in World 1 makes its way to World 3 potentially more fluent/ polished. However since this is mostly based on adventures, i will begin with it and then make a brief analisis of the seperated worlds found in the Classic bundle.
Fancy Pants was always about parkouring through levels. It is a 2D side scrawler Platformer were the player controls Fancy Pants. The game was heavily inspired by the likes of Super Mario. Adventures begin straight from World3 as out of the first three it was the most self titled game with longer levels and better mechanics. As mentioned, in the game we control Fancy Pants,
a stick figure with a unique haircut and ofcourse fancy pants. The goal in each level is pretty much to go from the start of the level all the way to the other. To achieve that the hero has to avoid enemies and parkour through platforms. The game is momentum based, where the faster you run the higher you ll jump or the longer you ll slide. In adventures and World3 of Classic the player can
temporarily climb the walls by kicking on them. This is done by running and jumping on a wall, then simply hold the jump button, Fancy Pants will then kick the wall to go a bit higher before gravity starts to slowly bring him down. The player can then bounce of the wall to reach higher ground. Wall climb and wall jump are available from the start. World1 & World2 do not have the wall climb but
in adventures since they re unlocked further in the game those exist as its the same hero with same mechanicks.
Fancy Pants could only defeat the opponents by jumbing on top of them just like super Mario jumbed on Goompas. When the player sprints the player can slide which will once again knock the enemies away. Certain enemies cannot be defeated
by simply jumbing on them as they may have weapons or spike and need to be stunned by missing a hit. At some point, Fancy Pants will obtain a pencil(weapon) which he can use to knock out opponents. The player can tap the button for
Pancy Pants to stunt the enemies or hold it down to knock em away. Certain enemies can only be hit by a charging attack but it requires a couple of blows. The same attacks can happen in the air with potentially different animations. The pencil
does not exist in the original World 1 and World 2 however the player can use the weapon in adventures once World 1/2 re unlocked.
Fancy Pants is fragile as his HP bar are on the top left depicted with a line and his face next to it depicting the ammount of lives he has. When the player is hit, he gets knocked away and loses a certain ammount of HP. When multiple enemies
hit the player they lose life until it runs out. When Fancy Pants dies he falls down and his angel leaves for heaven similarly to Crash Bandicoot which will spawn him in the begining. The only way the hero can heal is by collecting Squiggles that can be found around the world.
Collecting Squiggles can be used as collectibles, healthbar recovery or spent in the store in some games.
In adventures Both World 1 and World 2 are available but the player will have to unlock them. In order to do so, they ll have to collect golden stars, 20 and 30 respectively. The stars can be found around the levels or will be given to the player as rewards for
completing a challenge room or time trial. When a star is collected a bar will appear with 3 star slots. If the collected star goes into the second slot it means the player already missed one. Stars were also added in World 1 & 2. In World 2 every golf challenge rewards
the hero with a star where in the Classic bundle, a ball in the hole usually rewarded the player with a new Pants color.
Honestly, i remember playing the game on the web browser years ago when i was young and i still love it, revisiting it now. The game aged well and it feels like it's timeless. The parkour of the game is very smooth and there are plenty of games that came out that still fail to match the parkour or the momentum based agility that Fancy Pants made. The level design was very good and very straight forward with a couple of collectibles to be found. The Sword implementation back then was underly used but it tried to do something. Eitherway it manage to build a foundation for the next game to thrive.
Fancy Pants Adventure has a couple of things to keep you playing the game. World1 and World 2 are included but can only be unlocked by collecting 20-30 Gold stars respectively. These worlds can then accessed all the time. Each level has a total of 3 stars that can be collected, squiggles, time challenges, collectables/treassures and challenge doors. It goes without saying that World 2 also has its own challnege doors and levels. In World 2 every level has 1 challenge door with its own self contained level and also a snail with a hole. Fancy pants can defeat the snay and then kick its shell all the way to the hole. These Fancy golfball miniquests reward the player with cosmeticks. All of these mini levels and mini challenges can be accessed from the Arcade machine located inside Fancy Pants home in the hub world. Last but not least the player can collect all of Fancy Pants Wardrobe. This includes hairstyles/hats, alternative pant's colors and weapon's appearance. Theres over 100(141) unlockables to collect. Most are given from the secret doors, the fancy golfball and by revisiting and beating old levels.
The graphics of the game are reminising of the Flash era of games BUT it's worth mentionning that once again this game's artistic view is once again timeless. Everything is hand drawn and matches Brad Borne's love for the Flipbook animation art.
Most of the cast have unique smooth animations that breath live into the game. The backrounds are filled with multiple easter eggs and humorous acts. For example, a reference to Bat spider(Batman), a spider cutting down the giant Bean stock, The devs
working on the "next" game and many many more.
The music of the game is quite interesting itself. When the game was made, the music was combosed by Mike Raznick, and individual who grew up to become an industry legends composing multiple melodies for every type of game, from Indies to triple AAA. He worked with industry titans like
Insomniac games(Ratchet and Clank), Tekken, Call Of Duty, Doom, Clash of Clans and others. Some of the songs are iconic, maybe not to the level of Mario but close enough. Fun fact, during the original development, Brad was
using effects found in Super Mario Bros 3 before founding the Fancy pants melody.
The Classic pack is the alternatively way to experience the game if Fancy Pants adventures is not for you. The classic pack brings back all the original Worlds 1,2 & 3 and it has a extra lair of polishness to match the 2024 era of gaming. It also allows the player to experience the game with a controller instead of the keyboard or the touch screen. Additional to the Classic bundles is the inclusion of forgotten/extra levels that were made later. Furthermore, you can experience playing as Cutie in World 1 who has her own unique gameplay mechanick. Last but not least, Fancy Snowboarding is available which is a spin off game and consist of 12 levels. This game has the Fancy pants man moving through the levels and the players goal is to create platforms to help the hero reach the goal within a given time. During the run, the player can collect a present, which acts as the collectable. Top left theres a penchil shape with ink that depicts how long the player can draw platforms. Ink regenerates slowly on its own.
In conclusion, Fancy Pants is timeless classic that entertained people back in the early 2000s and again since 2024. The bundles include three titles with some extra addition in the Classic bundle found on steam. The narrative of all three games are simple, humorous and entertainning. The gameplay is simple, the game focusses on 2D platforming with focus on speed and momentum. The sword play barely scratch the surface of the games potential but as seen with each installment the games formula keeps evolving. Super Fancy Pants also seems to have focused on the quality of the sword. The hand drawn graphics keeps the games looks fresh and clean and stood the test of time. The audio department also aged well as right professionals worked on it. Fancy Pants adventures are free to download on the Play store and Google store. The individual versions of each game can be played on online websites such as Poki and others. Of course you can support the series through the official release on Steam. Fancy Pants Classic and Super Classic Pants can be acquired from Steam for a very affordable price.
This is a video of me playing the game.
Please excuse the lack of sound and the giant Subscribe Button. I recorded the gameplay using an app which left a watermark and wanted to hide it. At the same time i didnt know that the app wasnt recording the sound.