Fat Princess

Let them eat cake.

Source // PlayStation

Smaller downloadable titles can give folks the chance to try something that perhaps wouldn't work in a bigger game. They also allow for the adaptation of classic game modes into something more focused or nuanced, fully exploring what it means to capture a flag in a multiplayer team game, for example, like Fat Princess chose to do.

Two teams battle it out in a gory cartoon competition with one goal: rescue their princess from the opposition castle, all while their enemies are making it harder by fattening her up with cake.

Don your caps and grab some cake for what will probably be a silly little game.

Source // PlayStation

Fun Times

I never played Fat Princess in its heyday. I think I always saw it as too small or too silly to bother with, and all these years later it turns out that overlooking it was probably a mistake.

After making sure to turn on the gore options and ignoring as many tooltips that had turned into adverts for DLC as I could, I got the bots out for a few games of this stupid take on the capture the flag game mode.

Source // PlayStation

You are an elf whose princess is in another castle, prisoner, and potentially getting fed with an awful lot of cake to make her harder to rescue. Say what you will about objectifying women, Fat Princess simply plugs cake into its ears and carries on.

To rescue your princess, you'll need to work as a team as one of several hat-based classes. Pick up a worker's hat and you're the kind of elf who improves the hat-making machines and levels up the other classes, which include knights and rangers to focus on combat, priests and mages to support with the healing and the dazzling spellcasting.

Source // PlayStation

Source // PlayStation

Source // PlayStation

 

These hats can be picked up and swapped out at will, so whatever the situation calls for, grab a hat and get to work. Playing the objective, both of the game and your class will net you points, but progress towards the goal of getting your princess back to your castle is pretty much all you'll need to focus on.

The action is often so quick that you'll have died and respawned back at your castle by the time you've rocked up to the front lines, but defensive towers can be taken over and used to lock down key areas of the map, hopefully allowing workers to chop down trees, mine a load of stone, and turn all these resources into ladders, trampolines, defensive structures and the like.

Source // PlayStation

Many classes, many ways for them to get the job done. While someone is chopping down the forest, someone else is defending the workers from incoming enemy attacks, and someone else is finding cake to return to the princess to fatten her up and make her harder to rescue - a task which is already hard on account of how frantic the action outside the castle walls often is.

Source // PlayStation

Source // PlayStation

Frustrations

As I was working with bots, against bots, my matches were often a little bit of a slog. Progress was generally slow, even though everything moved at a slick pace. You'd sprint everywhere to get to what you needed before the enemy, attempt to hold onto your position and/or life for as long as you could, died, respawn, quick change of hat if needed and off you went again.

Source // PlayStation

Source // PlayStation

Further Fun Times

It was, however, generally quite entertaining, even through the repetition. The art style and colours especially pop out at you, but they're almost too friendly for what the game may turn out to be in the hands of multiple human players. Maybe that's why there is a gore setting - to make it look as brutal as it ought to look. And even then, it looks charming.

Final Word

With human teammates and an actual plan of attack to work towards as a team, Fat Princess probably moves a little quicker and works a little better, but even against bots and with plenty of adverts saying I should buy into the DLC, Fat Princess was a blast to play.

Simplicity in its controls allows you to just play the game. Pick a hat, see what you can do, do that thing to the best of your abilities for the sake of your team, repeat as necessary. All team-based games allow for a little lone-wolfing, but Fat Princess players need to be wise about that, I think. I for one was never able to just waltz up to the castle after a long flank and take back our princess.

Far better to work your way into the map, upgrade your equipment and offensive capabilities, work together to bomb the defences or bounce off trampolines over the castle walls before absolutely legging it with a hopefully not-too-fat princess in hand - and what other game gives you that, eh?

As I say, I wish I had played it when it first came out, but there's still something to enjoy a decade later, even if you're not too happy with the idea of rescuing a fat princess as your main objective.

Fun Facts

A bigger PlayStation Portable release features even more modes to play in and an expanded single-player storyline. The story is an awful lot of 'save the fat princess' between bot matches, but then what multiplayer game ever gets a single-player story right?

Fat Princess, developed by Titan Studios, first released in 2009.

Version played: PlayStation 3, 2009.