A Gummy’s Life Early Access Review

A Gummy’s Life is a party game similar to games such as Gang Beasts. A local multiplayer experience with humorist mechanics that enhance game-play. How does it hold up against the competition?

The start screen makes the game appear to be of Japanese origin although the developer is based within Spain. The art style reflects that of cuteness and innocence. After refining the simplistic graphics settings and starting the game all players must press start to be added to their respective screens. Although we were unable to hit the maximum number, there is an upper limit of sixteen players! Getting that many controllers to connect to one PC may be a task though.

There are many characters to choose from and a variety of colours to choose from for duplicates. Some of the characters are locked but you won’t be disappointed with the initial selection available. We did some testing with bots to see what it would be like with the maximum players, we concluded with the opinion that it was hard to find your character, making playing the game hard.

Game arenas reflect recognizable themes from video games and extended media; for example the Robot Wars arena is directly referenced. Other themes include Rocket League and Lord Of the Rings. Nostalgia is a big part of this game, though at times it does feel unoriginal and uninspired. There are dynamic objects within some of the arenas that can change how the game is played. One of the more exciting ones is scoring a goal, causing everyone close to the goal to fly out of the stadium (death)

Game-play is a brawler, requiring fighting mechanics to kill the other players. Like in Gang Beasts, there is no health bar, it is more effective to use the arena events to your advantage as these often cause instant death to the player. Learning these mechanics will give you an edge over the competition. There are additional game modes such as Team Death-match and Hot Potato which requires you to punch other players to pass the potato before dying. Last man standing wins!

The announcer within the game is annoying. It reflects a style that contrasts everything else about the art-style and gameplay. It is unclear if the voice acting is working as intended or if it is simply bad. The backing tracks are bouncy and cute, thankfully it is better than the voice acting but could be improved.

There are a few glitches within the game. Some of them are game breaking but most create humour (still not an excuse). Holding down the ‘dabbing’ emote for instance for too long will cause an endless, loop that cannon. Another, more serious glitch caused the hill (king of the hill) to stop spawning, causing us to have to quit to the menu to end the game.

Due to the lack of online multiplayer within A Gummy’s Life, if you don’t have a group of people, do not buy this game. An online service is in development but for the moment. Bot gameplay doesn’t have the same appeal of actual players. Humour is a standing point which can’t be reiterated in a single player experience.

Despite its problems A Gummy’s Life still stands out as a good party game. At the time of writing it’s still in the Early Access stage of development. Hopefully the developers will iron out the glitches and extend the game arenas a bit more in the future. Although it takes a very large chunk of inspiration from other media, it still provides entertaining game play.

REVIEW CODE: A FREE PC code was provided to Brash Games for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to editor@brashgames.co.uk.

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