Embrace Cheerful Chaos in 'Toejam and Earl: Back in the Groove'

Toejam and Earl: Back in the Groove is kind of a weird game. It’s a bit of a patchwork of a series, overall: originally a very funky (literally) isometric roguelike on the Genesis that was at once a celebration of black culture, 90s cartoon sensibilities, funk music, adventure games and… roguelikes way before they were cool, it then spawned a number of sequels. A weird but kind of cool 2D adventure/platformer back on the Genesis, a bizarre throwback on the Xbox, and now this new game, which is mechanically and aesthetically a spiritual successor to the original.

While it’s playing hard for 90s nostalgia—with its soundtrack and over-the-top characters—it does feel very much like it’s own thing. It’s a nearly combat-free isometric roguelike with a lot of random elements and a truly cheerful disposition. It has a lot of zany ideas about life on earth and a weirdly pleasant overall vibe. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing for my first few hours, but I kept coming back to it, mostly because this game is just so goddamned happy to exist.

That’s an odd thing to say about a game, but it feels accurate here. Reading through creator Greg Johnson’s writings on his history with the series, it feels like Back in the Groove is something of a miracle baby, shocked and delighted by its own release. That’s partially because it’s thematically centered on surviving random chaos.

“Hey! Life is pretty wild,” the game seems to be saying. “It’s very random. One minute, you’re exploring a new island, opening presents, the next, a cartoon devil knocks you off the land and you crash back on the platform below. Or an irate mom with a screaming kid in a shopping cart crashes into you and you die. You may as well eat fudge sundaes and enjoy it while you’re here!”

I’ve just described the moment-to-moment gameplay as well as the overarching philosophy of Back in the Groove. Life here is unfair and random. It is chaotic and wild and you will get some bad rolls. But you’ll also find a lot of fun, nice, funky things to celebrate.

In each procedurally-generated run, you start on the bottom level: a small collection of floating islands representing earth somehow. You need to find an elevator to get to the next level, where you’ll go about the business of looking for ship parts (your main objective, there are ten scattered across the twenty-plus levels of each game), shaking trees and houses for hidden presents (all of which give necessary items, buffs or debuffs), and avoiding lethal earthlings. Devils that try to run you off the edge. Fanboys who slam into you overzealously looking for an autograph. Tatted-up Cupids who throw confusion arrows at you and mess with your controls for a few minutes. And tens more, all of them annoying, especially when they gang up on you.

But there are good earthlings too! Pharaohs who uncover secret items. Opera ladies who sing bad earthlings out of existence. Sushi chefs—who, it should be noted, are not-terribly-sensitively-presented Asian caricatures. Oh. Fuck.

There are other racial caricatures in the game, made plain by the opening cinematic. Toejam and Earl (and their friends) are very deliberately meant to be young black folks, something Johnson has said himself in a Gamasutra piece: “Let me just say this clearly. ToeJam and Earl are inspired by black American culture. The game is a celebration of black American culture and music, and brotherhood.” In the same piece, he talks about being a biracial black man himself, and wanting to celebrate that in his work.

Where this get complicated, of course, is that this very 90s, cartoonish, over-the-top representation is so simplified. Every earthling in the game is either an obstacle or a helper in some small concrete way, from the segway-riding mall-cops who butt into you to the carrot-suit-wearing wizards who grant you promotions and allow you to level up. This is an aesthetic choice, and for most of the game, it works, because they are based on behavior rather than race. But those Sushi chefs feel like a pretty awkward misstep here.

Back in the Groove can be frustrating in its randomness, of course, as the original game could be. As you don’t know at first what any of the presents do, you can completely screw yourself by getting into a hairy situation with, say, the “present” that spawns an earthling mob on your location, or the horrifying “instant demotion.” Or you can get extremely lucky and breeze through on a pair of icarus wings, floating over obstacles and enemies with the greatest of ease. The game swings wildly from very chill present-hunting to almost overwhelming periods of being hunted, and it turns on a dime.

But it’s tuned, somehow, some way, to give you a fighting chance. There are presents so powerful that they temporarily give you a godlike edge. Helpful earthlings are more plentiful than I expected. And you level up relatively quickly, boosting your stats such as speed, search ability, and luck with haste. There are also easier difficulty settings, including one, easy-farty, that lets you basically fart every few minutes to ward off enemies. Yes, this is the kind of game we’re in.

The color scheme (and the humor), aren’t subtle. But I enjoyed the juvenile, day-glow antics of Back in the Groove, aside from the aforementioned caricatures. There’s a sweetness to its worldview, thanks, naturally, to its naive but lovable leads and their cheerful desire to keep going, no matter how horrible or comically outmatched they are on any given level. All they want are snacks and ship parts, so they can get away from this weird and hostile planet. They aren’t here to bother anyone, and they won’t let bad luck get in their way.

In 2019, that’s downright inspirational.

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Editor's note: It is worth noting that Matt Conn And Toni Rocca, were producer and tester, respectively, on Back in the Groove. Both resigned from the studio Midboss following multiple accusations of abuse and harassment. Waypoint was unaware of their roles on this game prior to publication. That fact produced complicated feelings among our staff, and as we know many readers would like to have that information in advance of any decision to purchase this game, we include it here.