#le crew

After Bomb Rush Cyberfunk wowed me, I wanted to take a second look at this even more indie project memorialising Jet Set Radio. I've played Episode 1 (and some pre-release demos) before but since then, French lead dev Le Capitaine and their Le Crew have finalised Episodes 2 and 3, and published them to Steam as a bundle. Supposedly it's still to be continued but for now the team is hard at work on an F-Zero homage. Hopefully they come back and keep expanding this because what's there so far is really good!

Rather than using JSRF as a jumping off point for gameplay, Butterflies seems to prefer refining what the original JSR was doing. This means a more realistic sense of inertia, and managing the momentum of your crew of inline-skating delinquents. The dash button is there to pick up speed on the ground and grinding rails is not effortless. It's clearly set on improving the clunky play control of the Dreamcast game though, and the result is fast, technical, and satisfying... when you've put some time into mastering it.

To get you there is a low-pressure kind of game design with a set of missions that populate the large levels. You can roam around, tackling them and finding tag spots as you please without a timer ticking down, which on its own is a big step up from JSR for me. These tasks are usually races that pass through checkpoints or specific line runs that require keeping a combo going—some in Episode 1 are particularly strict—while Episode 3 adds in extra graffiti challenges. Going through the checklist is a nice way of showing off these urban sandbox levels as you hunt for write spots or (as of Episode 2 onwards) collectible music tracks.

Each episode has one map to itself while advancing the overall story. The first two are hilly suburban areas, with a bit of industrial in E1, and E3 features a sprawling inner-city area connected by train tracks. Powerlines to grind on and the ability to wallgrind on almost any wall if you have enough speed help you traverse the high degree of verticality built into these zones. The first two episodes have an interesting grungy, sketchy look while the third revamps things with more colour and shiny detail. Populating the maps are your typical low-poly NPCs (I spotted some modelled on Lammy and Parappa!) as well as bear-hugging cops, flying police drones, and zap-projectile-slinging cameras: as of E3, these can all be dealt with by a quick application of spray paint (which by the way is unlimited).

The story is handled a bit more seriously than in some other street punk simulators. In this near-future world, a Japanese city has seceded and is now run as an independent autocracy by one General Sakamoto, and by the end of E3 the rebellious Nat and her growing Butterflies crew are gearing up to rise above petty rudie squabbles and vandalism to really fight back against the fascism. The inclusion of real-world cultures and concerns keeps the tone grounded, like when one of your teammates Jae (who tags in Hangeul) comments on the treatment of Korean immigrants; another, Zinnie, wears a hijab and interjects in Arabic, while Rin is a trans girl and you follow her journey of self-discovery in dialogue which I thought was handled pretty well.

On top of their characterisation in cutscene dialogue, these touchstones make the characters deeper and more relatable, more than just a cool cel-shaded character design. They also for the most part have clear strengths in their stat distributions; I favoured speed specialist Zinnie for getting around. Each one has distinct graffiti designs (they all get a refresh in E3 as well) that, while simple, usually include their name (in katakana) and tell you something about their personality. Writing involves a three-stage timing-based minigame so everyone has three unique designs, although you might find you end up with the simplest "bare minimum" one all over just to save time with the ~200 spots per map.