As fun as Mayweather hugging Pacquiao! We take a look at the new indie release "Will Fight for Food."

Will Fight for Food: Super Actual Sellout Game of the Hour is an eclectic bag of mixed feelings. On one hand the game lacks any sort of meaningful depth, but on the other hand it is that lack of depth that makes the game fun to pick up and put down again. The brevity of the experience serves to only bolster this point. The experience feels incomplete, yet somehow through its incomplete nature, it beats the odds and becomes whole.

Will Fight for Food is straight up about its shortcomings. It knows the combat system is fairly bland. It knows the inventory system feels tacked on and silly. It knows the characters and universe make no sense. And it knows that in most cases, this is a surefire formula of an absolutely terrible experience. Yet, it’s how the game weaves these shortcomings together in clever ways that create a more than passable gaming appetizer.

The combat system is straight-up boring. I mean, you have three attacks with no real combo system or any sort of meaningful depth. But here’s the thing: This ties perfectly into the narrative and the character you play. You roleplay as one Jared Casey Dent, a washed up wrestler scraping just to get by. He’s a dumb brute that can unleash physical bedlam on almost any NPC (I didn’t find someone in a robot suit who was gifted with invincibility). When I realized how the “lame” combat system and the protagonist were weaved together in a silly tapestry, it just made sense. After that moment I found myself laughing at the stupidity of the combat system; the telling part is that I felt as if I was laughing with the game, not at it.

If you thought the combat system was shallow, then wait until you get a load of the story. It’s basically you catching up with, and punching, people you knew previously in your life. I actually opted to skip the huge twist in the story, and the game never let me in on the big secret. What kind of a game offers that kind of self-defeating choice? It defies any sort of mainstream game logic to allow a player to completely opt out of the story and continue brawling with an entire town. But again, I found that it ties in with the whole. The game is based off of choice (to punch or not to punch, that is the question!) and given the protagonist’s disposition, we can assume that he wouldn’t care about the outcome of some overarching plot.  So then I found myself at another crossroad: Is this stupidity in the flesh, or a hilarious way of taking choice to the extreme? I’d argue that it’s a grand mixture of both!

The inventory and loot system are extremely basic and feel as if they were added in order to add a small bit of depth to the obviously shallow gameplay. I found myself using the same gear because it didn’t change my appearance and didn’t really add much to my gameplay experience. In fact, I’d say it was a bit of a detractor, especially when I had to deal with movement stats. If you dropped that stat your character began moving at a snail’s pace. For an otherwise quick, action-oriented game, I found myself bogged down by gear that would have otherwise made me powerful. A part of me likes that they tried to add a small chunk of depth, but the other side of me wishes that they removed the system entirely. In a game about punching, I don’t want my haymakers limited by some cumbersome gear.

The most consistent portions of this game are its art and music. Like just about everything else they weave together seamlessly. The art and music seemed to really be intertwined and neither ever felt out of sync with each other. It harkens back to old-school sidescrollers while simultaneously carving its own path. Once I threw on my mask and started letting loose on some poor pedestrians, I found that the music picked up pace in order to accommodate the destruction. Yes, the music is limited and does get repetitive, but I still think that it paired so well with the art style that it never really bothered me all that much.

The game is very short. Not short enough that I wouldn’t pay the five dollar buy-in, however. To be frank, there isn’t anything out there like it. The slapstick, deadpan humor found throughout is enough to justify the price of admission. The dialogue is hit and miss but when a joke connects with you it will leave you chuckling at the very least. This game has a bit of love for just about everyone. If you’re looking to spend an hour of your time away from your favorite game, I’d suggest checking out Will Fight for Food. I can’t guarantee you’ll love it. What I can tell you is that you’ll find something that the game does that you’ll like and for five bucks you’d be hard-pressed to find a game so conflicted between mediocrity and greatness.

Pros: +Simple combat                 Cons: -Simple combat

+Simple story                        -Simple story

+Simple art                          -Simple art

+Simple music                        -Simple music

+Short campaign                      -Short campaign

You can pick up Will Fight for Food on Steam now!

Ian Nowakowski

Follow me! @ian_nowakowski