My Friend Pedro

Submission 2,559

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About

My Friend Pedro is a shoot-em-up video game developed by DeadToast Entertainment and published by Devolver Digital. The game is based off a 2014 flash game hosted by Adult Swim. It features a mixture of fast and slow-motion mechanics, as well as absurd style mechanics such as firing bullets off kitchenware to kill enemies. The titular Pedro is a talking banana who convinced the unnamed player character to murder hordes of criminal enemies. It was released June 20th, 2019 for Windows and the Nintendo Switch.

History

On February 19th, 2014, Deadtoast uploaded the first trailer for the flash game, My Friend Pedro.

The game was released on Adult Swim on May 17th, 2014.^[1] That day, YouTuber Rob Plays uploaded a Let's Play of the game, gaining over 12,000 views (shown below).

DeadToast developer Victor Agren posted on November 21st, 2015 that they were working on creating a full version of the game on the DeadToast dev log.^[2] There, he posted progress reports about the game for several years. On November 18th, 2016, he announced that Devolver Digital had joined the project.^[4] On June 10th, 2018, Devolver Digital released a trailer for the game (shown below, left). A prototype of the game appeared at E3 2018, and people began getting hands-on experience with the playable demo.^[3] Jacksepticeye played the demo on his channel after it was sent to him by Agren on June 26th, 2018, gaining over 3.2 million views (shown below, right).

On June 6th, 2019 Devolver announced a June 20th release date for the game in a trailer (shown below, left). On June 19th, they published a launch trailer that was highly praised for its style, with Polygon^[5] calling it the best video game trailer of 2019 so far.

Reception

The gamed opened to strong reviews, receiving scores of 81 for PC and 80 for Switch on Metacritic.^[6] Most critics praised the game's fluid mechanics and stylish combat, with some criticizing the game's thin story and third act. PC Invasion^[7] writer Cameron Woolsley wrote the game was very enjoyable to play and gave minor criticisms about the clunky auto-aim feature. Cultured Vultures^[8] wrote, "Even with an underwhelming final third and a paper-thin plot holding it back, My Friend Pedro is a fruity and exhilarating ride." The game also has a "very positive" rating on Steam^[9] with over 180 reviews.

Online Presence

While My Friend Pedro does not have an individual social media presence, its online presence has been buoyed by numerous fans hyping the game across social media. Jacksepticeye played the game the day it was officially released, gaining over 168,000 views in two hours (shown below, left). TheRadBrad posted a walkthrough of the game and gained over 30,000 views in 70 minutes (shown below, right). A compilation of reviews thread on Reddit's /r/gaming^[10] gained over 410 points in four hours.