Microsoft has announced that Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, Episode One will debut on Xbox Live Arcade on May 21st. This is the first installment of an adventure RPG series featuring the characters from gaming web comic Penny Arcade.

The game's story and dialogue was written by Jerry Holkins, the writer for Penny Arcade. Holkin's Penny Arcade alter ego "Tycho" and his friend "Gabe" (alter ego of PA artist Mike Krahulik) are the main characters in the game. I'm not completely clear on the game's story but apparently Gabe and Tycho are detectives in an old-timey steampunk city endangered by an army of Fruit Fucker robots. Fruit Fucker, the robot who fornicates with seed plants, is a character from the web comic and you'd probably be better off searching through the PA archives to find out why it's funny than have me try to explain it.

The game runs on the Torque Game Engine developed by GarageGames based on the code developed for Tribes 2. It's a 3D game but the characters are cel-shaded to give them a hand-drawn feel and a strong resemblance to the comic you know and love (or don't know and don't love...go check out that archive).

The gameplay is a combination of turn-based RPG combat and puzzles. Supposedly you'll be able to transfer your character stats and inventory from one episode to the next, though the episodes are designed so you don't have to play them in sequence. Each episode is estimated to offer around 8-10 hours of gameplay.

Penny Arcade Adventures was developed by Hothead Games and will be also be available for PC, Mac, and Linux via Greenhouse, a new digital distribution platform for independent games.