OK K.O.! Let’s Play Heroes release date announced

OK K.O.! Let’s Play Heroes, a side-scrolling beat ’em up based on Cartoon Network’s TV show of the same name, will be available for PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and Windows PC on January 23. Earlier this week, series creator Ian Jones-Quartey made the announcement on PlayStation Blog, alongside an official gameplay debut trailer.

Though Jones-Quartey’s other popular animated shows (like Adventure Time and Steven Universe) also have video game adaptations, OK K.O.! Let’s Play Heroes stands out for having been designed at the same time as the show. Last March, indie developer Capy Games announced that it would be teaming up with Cartoon Network to bring Jones-Quartey’s new IP into the video game space; this process began, according to Jones-Quartey, when the idea for the new show/game was still raw and uncemented.

I’d known about Capy for some time and was excited to work with them, but when we started, there was no real show yet to base things on. We had an old pilot, some character designs and a few story ideas, but we were still brainstorming and developing the show, and we wanted the game to develop in the same way.

OK K.O.! Let’s Be Heroes follows the stories of youngster K.O. and his various adventures and adolescent antics. He plays video games and occasionally battles robots invading his hometown of Lakewood Plaza Turbo; a small town populated by superheroes. In Capy’s game, the heroes of Lakewood are mysteriously having their “hero levels” reset to zero. You play as K.O. in this battles against robots to bring glory and favorable hero levels back to the town. Judging by the trailer, the game looks to fit the role of a classic beat ’em up, but Jones-Quartey says that it will also feature some RPG mechanics.

Capy Games gained favorable resonance in the indie scene with games like Superbrothers: Sword & Sorcery (2011) and Super Time Force (2014). The team had been working on a highly anticipated dungeon-crawling roguelike called Below for several years before delaying it indefinitely last summer.

See below for our list of partners and affiliates: