Gang Beasts , the pseudo smash style brawler from Double Fine, is a little stupid. But stupid in a good way. See, as someone who normally sucks hard at fighting games I really appreciate Gang Beasts play style. Players control little rubbery avatars who collide in imprecise ways. It feels like a lot of pointless button mashing, which is exactly my fighting game skill level.
But gauging the constant crowd at IndieCade East 2016, it appears to be the skill level of a lot of gamers. Plenty of smiling groups fumbled their way through levels as players tried to drag each other into various Mr.Bill-esque machinery to be squished and smashed. Or there's the hilarious scrums that occur when fighters try to toss each other off of ledges. So groups of players start bumping into each other and frequently dangle over the edge, clinging desperately to one another before rubber banding back to safety (or doom).
The controls are fairly simple. The L1 and R1 buttons act as punches and grapple, triangle lifts opponents up over your head, X jumps and square kicks. Kind of. Spamming the kick button doesn’t unleash a torrent of kicks. Depending on your characters position he may just flop over. The only reliable thing to do is grapple and lift, as punches also land with irregular accuracy.
If you’re a twitchy, OCD Smash bro than Gang Beasts will probably drive you nuts at first. It doesn’t make much sense, there’s no order. But the more you play, and the more you toss and shove your rubbery claymation looking foes to their death the more fun you have. You realize that, really, nobody is actually good or great in the way that the people who dominate other fighters can be. (Unless you play Gang Beasts against kids. Holy fuck are kids good at Gang Beasts ).
Lessons learned from #IndieCadeEast16 : 8 year olds are really, really good at @gangbeasts
— Mo Mozuch (@mo_mozuch) May 1, 2016
I’m sure there are going to be people who figure out how to be effective fighters when Gang Beasts releases on PS4 and PlayStation VR later this year (it’s in Early Access on Steam already). But this is a fighting game for non-fighters. It’s egalitarian, we’re all equally bad and that makes it much more fun than a game that is complex and inaccessible.
I thoroughly enjoyed the demo at IndieCade East 2016. I played it every single day I was at the festival. I can’t wait for the full release and plan on forcing everyone in the iDigi office to play with me. Maybe I’ll stand a chance against people my own age.
