The gameplay consists mostly of seek-and-find puzzles, reminiscent of adventure games, where the player must collect items and return them to a character to advance the plot.

After a brief tutorial, the player teams up with Tycho Brahe, a scholar of Apocalyptic Studies turned detective, and his exceedingly violent partner who fought with the devil,[10] Johnathan Gabriel, in search of information on Fruit Fucker Prime.

The three meet with Tycho's mechanically gifted niece, Anne-Claire, who suggests they search New Arcadia for evidence of Fruit Fucker Prime and parts of it.

They discover the smaller Fruit Fuckers are built in a factory underneath the Shithole, an apartment building the player briefly considers renting from, and that the mimes are devotees of Yog Sethis, also known as the "Silent One".

They gather the required items (a vacuum tube, scorched hobo urine, and the soul of the mime cult's leader), transform their weapons, and defeat the Silent One.

A trip to Anne-Claire's reveals that they have found the original designer of the Fruit Fuckers: Dr. Jonathan Crazoir, presently incarcerated in the same sanatorium as Tycho's father and grandfather when they succumbed to the insanity inherent to dealing with otherworldy affairs.

They enter the sanitarium to find Crazoir, who promises to give Tycho, Gabe, and the Player everything related to his research, as well as a "robot monkey card", if they can free him from the madhouse.

After wooing the receptionist, they encounter huntsman/sanatorium owner Dr. Wolfington, who has used the millions made from the Brahe family's inevitable descent into madness to hunt down and kill every rare animal in the world.

The trio harvests them for their silk, as per Anne-Claire's request, collects the engine from the truck that Tycho crashed into the Player's house at the beginning of the game, and return to confront Wolfington.

The now-free Dr. Crazoir gives over his research, which suggests the Fruit Fucker to originally have been a farming tool called "Harvest Buddy", before the designs were stolen by someone as he was abducted by Dr. Wolfington.

Anne-Claire directs the trio next to the "Symposium on the Future of Man" to find more information on Fruit Fucker Prime (as well as the autograph of her idol, Dr. Lars Krangle).

Unfortunately, at the end of Dr. Krangle's keynote speech, Fruit Fucker Prime attacks, killing everyone in attendance, save Tycho, Gabe, the Player, and the enigmatic Dr.

Mundo then admits creations are stolen designs, and he himself is ostracized from the scientific community because of his radical theories on combining science and arcane magic.

As the four prepare for their deaths, Anne-Claire arrives piloting a giant robot of her own; a massive doll powered by a truck engine and Energite, wearing a Spider-Silk dress.

The title also received two free packs of downloadable content after release: The Lair of the Seamstress, which added a bonus dungeon to the game that became unlocked after getting all the class pins up to level 40, and The Beginning of the End, which reveals the fate of the player character between the events of Episodes 2 and 3.

Making their way to the ruins of the player's house, they find You huddled in the threshold asleep, wearing a large hat and a trench coat.

As they make their way further into the sewer, they happen upon a kismetite golem, made entirely of good luck, whose torso Tycho fails to diplomatically obtain.

After destroying the golem, a frustrated Tycho leads Gabe and You further in, finding a massive kismetite crystal in the back of the room, with a portal right next to it.

Teaming up with Anne-Claire, they fight past the cultists, and eventually face off against a crabomancer, then, upon defeating it, recover pins which bestow classes on whoever wears one (similar to the job system in early Final Fantasy games).

Anne-Claire returns home, Tycho and Gabe team up with Jim, a former colleague who lost his body in a work-related incident, reducing him to a skull floating in a jar of green liquid.

The party returns to the detective agency to pick up a device capable of allowing them to enter this dimension, but it is revealed that, in his ignorance of what the object was (it resembles a stein), Gabe gave it to a local homeless man.

The party goes to Hobo alley to recover it, and then head into the other dimension called the Periphery, represented by a stone path leading to multiple gateways, dotted with floating crystals.

The Brahe clan's long project, which Tycho and his family frequently speak of, is to wipe out these time capsules, as everyone would "get it wrong" and recreate the universe poorly.

While there, they discover that Tycho has placed Anne-Claire in one of the crystal time capsules, in the belief that she would be an ideal candidate to remake the world after the upcoming apocalypse.

Moira attempts to free her niece but they are interrupted by Yog-Modaign, whose avatar appeared near Anne-Claire specifically to lure Tycho to the periphery and buy Dr.

In the epilogue, Tycho's niece, who he hid in a pocket dimension, wakes up and begins to create a new universe, thanking her Uncle for his sacrifice and saying she and "You" will take over.

[11] The in-game music was composed by Jeff Tymoschuk, with the song "Final Boss" by MC Frontalot playing over the closing credits of Episode One.

During a Q&A session at PAX East 2010 on March 26, Holkins and Krahulik admitted that plans for production of Episode Three had been canceled, and that the ending of the story might be released in written form instead.

Penny Arcade released statistics showing that their game ranked third best in launch sales on Xbox Live Marketplace, coming after Rez HD and Ikaruga.

[25] While the game's artistic style and humor have drawn approval (with Edge noting that the latter can be an acquired taste), critics have questioned whether the gameplay will be strong enough to drive a whole series of titles.