In July 2024, the independent game developer, TALLGLASS, began the Kickstarter crowdfunding process for their first game, titled BOOM! Buster. With only 30 days between the beginning and end of their campaign, TALLGLASS managed to draw in 1,253 excited backers who ultimately crowdfunded the project with a total of $71,541. Being a project whose inspirations listed games like Tour De Pizza’s Pizza Tower, Studio MDHR’s Cuphead, and even cartoons such as Cartoon Network’s Ed, Edd, n Eddy and Adult Swim’s Smiling Friends, it is really no wonder TALLGLASS’s first project garnered a following in such a short amount of time.
With the development of their first title fully underway as of November 2024, TALLGLASS’s YouTube channel teased the next, smaller project in development in tandem with BOOM! Buster, titled Buster Jam. Though the initial teaser was less than a 30-second clip of early development footage, the central idea was clear for the direction TALLGLASS was intending to take their highly anticipated new mascot. As of this past Wednesday, October 22, Buster Jam received its second gameplay trailer detailing not only updated gameplay footage, but also elements of the game’s intended story mode through character-to-character dialogue whose comedic tone calls back strikingly to the cartoons listed as the series’ primary influences.
Buster Jam is described on its Steam page as a playable cartoon, in which you will take on the role of a wrecking crew duo, Buster and his girlfriend Bridget, as they embark on a journey to save their city from being turned into a ‘Wizard-topia’ by ‘the Wizard’. Through a multitude of colorfully detailed top-down worlds akin to Nintendo’s Paper Mario series, each jam-packed with puzzles, boss fights, micro-games reminiscent of the 2003 Nintendo GameCube classic WarioWare Inc., and zany casts of characters to interact with, Buster and Bridget will seriously have to put their bomb heads together if they ever hope to save themselves and their city from certain doom.
Fans of classic comedy, cartoons, and games are sure to be excited at the announcement of this upcoming double release from TALLGLASS; however, gamers are sure to be even more excited at the announcement that both BOOM! Buster and Buster Jam have received free-to-play demos available for PC via Steam. Though BOOM! Buster’s demo was announced and released after the grand success of its Kickstarter campaign in 2024, Buster Jam’s demo was recently announced this past October 22.