It’s hard to believe that Thumper came out almost eight years ago. The game had been a staple of shows like PAX East for years before release, and when it finally came out it was even better and deeper than expected. The VR support that got added later improved the game even more, removing any lag a monitor could introduce while increasing the player’s awareness of the obstacles coming down the track, plus providing a fantastic sense of scale to the proceedings. Thumper is a stone-cold classic, still feeling as fresh and dangerous today as the day it was released. Which is somehow almost eight years ago at this point, so it’s well past time for a sequel.
Space Eels Hate Baby Gods
Thrasher isn’t a direct sequel to Thumper but in look and feel it’s close enough. The names flow nicely into each other and the development studio is Puddle instead of Drool, so file this one under “thematic sequel” and nobody should complain too loudly. It is, however, going to be a very different game with a more free-flow form than Thumper’s rigid record-groove track. In Thrasher you direct a spiky-furry space eel as it twists across the sky, plowing through targets while aiming to rack up the biggest combo possible, with the goal being to rise up through the cosmos to punch a baby(-shaped god) in the face.
Thumper Composer, Designer Returns with Spiritual Successor Thrasher
While the trailers have been long on style, the specifics of the gameplay tend to get lost in visual overload. Some targets are best destroyed by letting them shatter against the eel’s body while other strings of lines should be dashed straight through, head-first. Items drift through the playfield with varying effects, from polyhedrons that can be rammed into a string of targets to radial explosions of rainbow spikes. It’s aiming to be a tempest of sound and light, but unlike Thumper it’s also designed so you can enjoy the trip rather than needing to max out every gameplay element to survive the journey.
Thrasher is releasing on July 25 with a fairly major disclaimer, in that it’s getting the VR treatment first. The native Meta Quest and Apple Vision Pro versions are just six weeks off, while the PC (VR-enabled and flat-screen) and any console editions are as yet unannounced. It should be fun to see the differences between the versions when they’re all available, though, with the Quest’s pointer-controllers being fast and precise while the Apple Vision Pro’s hand-tracking has gotten solid reviews. As for how that compares to a standard controller on a flatscreen display, there’s going to be a wait while those versions prep for launch. For now, though, Thrasher is just about ready to make its VR debut, andthe launch trailerisn’t making the nearly-completed wait for a not-quite-sequel to Thumper any easier.
