Funi Raccoon Game Is Queer, Funny, And Irish

Funi Raccoon Game feels like it’s bursting apart with purpose. Proudly boasting in its intro that it is made in Godot, the game is awash in low resolution sprites and public domain noises. It is often brash and abrasive, replete with blown out explosion sounds and sprites that would be at home on a GeoCities site. It is a game that not only does not hide its seams but makes a tapestry out of them. It is the shorter game with worse graphics that people claim they want. The result is indeed “Funi.”

As with real raccoons, the titular Funi the Raccoon steals stuff. You live in a transdimensional dumpster that costs over a million euros, your only instructions being given by a computer called the Four Dimensional Hypercube. You explore brave new worlds like Norwich, The Cliffs of Moher, and da Water Zone – islands suspended in space. Collecting new items allows you to explore new zones, and collected items will aggregate in a museum stage later. The world is garish and nonsensical, incoherent by design but laser focused in its aim. It is best described as an open world platformer, although genre conventions fall apart slightly as the game progresses. Many of the characters are simply items with little doodled faces on them, like Toastie, a youthful piece of toast that chain-smokes and keeps angrily asking where all the smog is coming from.

Funi Raccoon Game is peers with titles like Psycho Patrol R,  Arctic Eggs, Skate Story and Bubsy 3D: Bubsy Visits the James Turrell Retrospective – aggressive, low poly games that find their way to a truth through absurd humor and surreal worlds. While playing it I often thought of the Arcane Kids Manifes$to, a shorthand list of rules developed by the same group that developed the aforementioned Bubsy game. In particular, the rules “Play with structure,” “bad is more interesting than good,” “the purpose of gameplay is to hide secrets” and “the fastest way to tell the truth is a joke” repeated in my mind.  Like Psycho Patrol R, Funi Raccoon Game does have a political core intrinsically tethered to its identity, one that clips through the geometry in tiny moments until it is stated in no uncertain terms in the game’s “good” ending.

And like Psycho Patrol R and Baby Steps, Funi Raccoon Game rewards pushing against its limits to see what happens. Your curiosity is often rewarded with esoteric, niche treats. You can fall through a hole in a building and discover a colossal eldritch being or splinter group of paramilitary Kevins. Entering into twin shops labeled “bee shop” and “wasp shop” yields a black screen and a terrifying buzzing noise. At one point I found a piece of graffiti that says “CUM MAN,” itself a reference to a street tag that has popped up in the Dublin area. 

Funi Raccoon Game is unapologetically itself. There is a shit-kicking spirit to the game, something made clear when the Tuatha Dé Danann Lugh gives you a quest to reach for an officer’s firearm. As a game it is both unambiguously queer and Irish coded. You will see nonbinary, gay and trans iconography littered throughout the world. A poster on the wall at one point reads “Funi the Raccoon: It Is Gay.” Later levels also feature a drivable Kei truck, an implicitly gay thing to drive. The game’s contempt for the British is pure and just, as is its mockery of capitalism and environmental destruction. In another game these qualities could be cloying, but Funi Raccoon Game is not weighted down by them, instead using them as springboard for dumbass bits. 

I don’t need to tell you that things are bad if you’re reading our site. Everyone I know is broke, gaming is expensive, the game industry keeps destroying its best talent, and the billionaire companies care more about yassifying your games with AI than meaningful additions to rendering. The contempt for the audience by the people who profit is only exceeded by their apathy for the people who mortgage their lives to make it function. It has never been more difficult to make the affirmative case for the cutting edge of gaming.

I am too old to hope that indies will save us like some mystical force. That is never how these things work, and toxic structures find ways to replicate themselves even at the smallest scale. But it is nice to be reminded of what actually makes a game memorable. How many sprites do you need to cement a universe in your memory? Do you need DLSS to make a discovered secret feel magical? Does something need to make coherent sense to be sold, or can that be accomplished with a creative joke? Can you make a version of End of Evangelion from popsicle sticks and chewing gum?

Funi Raccoon Game does less with more, constructing a memorable cosmology from low res jpegs and goofy-ass jokes. There are arresting tableaus buried between the bits, glimpses of earnestness buried under the layers of deep fried, breakcore, Irish Verhoeven. Funi Raccoon Game does what it needs to do, and could never be mistaken for any other game. It is indefatigable, sardonic, often goofy and anchored by a strong sense of right and wrong. In a word, it is Irish.

You Can Play A Bunch Of Video Games In Irish

The Games From Ireland Steam event features games made in Ireland or from Irish teams

AftermathRiley MacLeod