A sentient banana tells you to kill people, and you oblige by performing slow-motion acrobatic gun violence through side-scrolling levels. My Friend Pedro, developed by DeadToast Entertainment and published by Devolver Digital in 2019, evolved from a popular Flash game into a full-release action platformer built around bullet time, dual-wielding, and physics-driven stunts. The concept is immediately appealing, and the game’s best moments deliver exactly the kind of shareable, clip-worthy action sequences that its trailers promised.
Community reception is warm but with significant caveats. Players who approach the game as a short, flashy experience with memorable highs tend to rate it favorably. Those who expect sustained depth from the mechanics or consistent quality across all levels find themselves disappointed. The gap between the game’s best moments and its average moments is wider than it should be, and the campaign’s second half is frequently cited as weaker than the first. The talking banana and absurdist humor connect with some players and fall flat for others.
Slow-Motion Violence as Performance Art
When My Friend Pedro clicks, it creates moments that feel like playing an action movie. The bullet time mechanic slows the world while you remain at full speed, allowing you to flip through the air, split your aim between two targets, kick a frying pan into the air and shoot it to ricochet bullets around a corner, all in a single flowing sequence. These moments are the reason the game exists, and they deliver a specific kind of joy that very few games can match.
The split-aiming system lets you target two enemies simultaneously while dual-wielding, which adds a layer of multitasking that makes combat feel more skilled than a typical side-scroller. Combined with the dodge roll, wall jumps, and environmental props like skateboards and motorcycles, the toolkit available to the player is extensive. The game encourages experimentation with its scoring system, rewarding creative kills and unbroken combos with higher ratings.
The art style and animation sell the fantasy effectively. The protagonist moves with exaggerated fluidity, spinning and flipping with a weightlessness that makes the acrobatics feel natural rather than scripted. Enemy ragdolls react to bullets with satisfying physics, and the slow-motion effects give you time to appreciate the chaos you’re creating. The soundtrack, a mix of electronic and hip-hop tracks, matches the stylish energy.
The Banana Gets Stale
Level design is inconsistent throughout the campaign. The strongest levels give you open arenas with multiple enemies and environmental tools, letting you choreograph your own action sequences. The weakest levels funnel you through linear corridors or force platforming challenges that the floaty physics don’t support well. A motorcycle chase sequence and several vehicle-based levels interrupt the core gameplay loop with less satisfying alternatives. The game is at its best when it trusts the player with freedom, and at its worst when it restricts it.
The campaign loses momentum in its second half. New ideas are introduced but not fully developed, and levels begin to feel longer without being more complex. Enemy variety doesn’t increase at the rate the game needs to stay challenging, and by the final chapters, the combat encounters feel routine despite the spectacular animations surrounding them. The roughly five-hour runtime is appropriate for the content, but the quality would improve with further trimming.
The humor, centered on Pedro the banana and the escalating absurdity of the story, is subjective by nature. It provides motivation to progress but doesn’t offer the satirical depth or surprise that similar games achieve with their comedic elements. Pedro’s commentary during levels can feel more like background noise than narrative engagement after the initial novelty wears off.
The Clip Machine
My Friend Pedro is fundamentally a game about creating cool moments, and evaluated purely on that metric, it succeeds. The replay system captures your best runs, and the scoring encourages replaying levels to find more creative solutions. For players who enjoy optimizing performance and sharing results, this loop adds substantial replay value beyond the initial playthrough. The game is often more fun to replay individual levels than to play straight through, which says something about both its strengths and its structural weaknesses.
The gap between a first playthrough and an optimized replay is significant. Initial runs involve learning layouts and mechanics. Replays allow you to plan sequences, maintain combos, and execute the kind of runs that look effortless despite requiring significant practice.
Should You Play My Friend Pedro?
If you enjoy stylish action games and don’t mind a short, uneven experience that peaks early, My Friend Pedro delivers memorable highs. Players who like creating and sharing gameplay clips will find a reliable source material here. Fans of bullet time mechanics and side-scrolling action should find enough to enjoy.
Pass on it if inconsistent level design frustrates you or if you need a game to maintain its best quality throughout. Players looking for deep combat systems or meaningful story progression will find both lacking. If the absurdist humor doesn’t land for you in the first hour, it won’t improve over the remaining four.
The Verdict on My Friend Pedro
My Friend Pedro delivers on its promise of balletic gun violence guided by a sentient banana, and the best moments create shareable clips of slow-motion acrobatics. The split-aiming, bullet time, and environmental physics combine to produce sequences that feel like action movie choreography. But the highs are inconsistent, with level design that doesn’t always support the freedom the mechanics promise, and the campaign runs out of ideas before it runs out of levels. It’s a great concept that a tighter, shorter game would have served better.