Systems: Windows, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5
Release Date: August 13, 2020
Publisher: Cranky Watermelon
Just a little bit of upfront information before we get to the actual game here. I started playing this game (which was one of the games that Amazon Games gave away a long-butt time ago) because The Squire saw the thumbnail for the game and said that he wanted to see "the watermelon" (translated roughly from "deh wahdmeln"). I at first had no idea what he was talking about until I noticed that there was a watermelon getting its head sliced off by, I believe, a popsicle. I have currently spent . . . [checks notes] an unknown amount of time playing because apparently, Amazon does not keep track of that information. But I have played quite a few games at this point. At least enough to unlock two additional character skins beyond the starting twelve, and a whole closet full of cosmetics that really function to remind you which character you are playing before the computer (or another player) slices you in half with an exploding boomerang thrown from halfway across the screen as you try to not jump into a bottomless cavern.
Boomerang Fu is an isometric co-op/single-player arena royale (is that a thing?) where you attack your opponents with boomerangs to be the last player remaining after an often chaotic 30 seconds. With few exceptions, there is no real time limit to how long you play each stage, but after a winner is declared, there is a tally showing how many kills each player had added to their total and then the next stage begins. After one character earns 16 kills, the game is over. Despite this game being co-op, either cooperative or competitive, I have only played it as a single-player game against between one and five other bots. You are able to set the difficulty of the bots between Easy and Hard (it affects all bots, you cannot set the individual difficulty of each bot, this isn't Perfect Dark), and I have found that I apparently play at a medium difficulty level, although Hard difficulty is not oppressively challenging.
As far as the bots themselves, they do act more intelligently and aggressively on higher-difficulty settings. On Easy, you can watch two bots bump into each other without anyone taking a swing, even when it is down to the last two bots. They may also be less likely to pick up power-ups or accidentally jump into a hole/gap/water and kill themselves. Across all difficulties, I have never noticed the bots teaming up against any of the other bots or against me which is something that I had worried about, but it is nice to know that the bots will attack everyone equally.
There are some built-in balancing mechanics that I actually really enjoy. When each round starts, all characters are unarmed, although you can still punch other characters or hit a switch if you are close enough. A literal second or two later, you are armed with your boomerang which you can either swing like a sword or throw like a traditional boomerang which can be a high-risk, high-reward maneuver. When you throw your boomerang, there is a chance that it hits an obstacle on its return flight and you are now unarmed unless you run over and pick it up, or you telekinetically pull the boomerang back to you. After several rounds of play, the player with the highest number of kills is literally crowned in-game, but other players who are significantly behind in kills will automatically be given a forcefield shield that can deflect up to one hit, essentially giving them two hits to be killed. This makes engaging with other bots who are shielded significantly dangerous because if you are not and you are trying to take down their shield, there is the very real chance that the cooldown between swinging your boomerang (or throwing it), you could get hit by another player coming around a corner or jumping over a gap.
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As I have been playing exclusively on PC, the controls are a little strange and take some getting used to. Not so much the WASD for moving, but using J for jumping/dashing, K for melee attack, and L for throwing the boomerang all feel a little awkward and require a bit of practice to get the coordination down. The game does allow you to remap the controls to whatever you want and I did try a few different combinations for the JKL keys, but in the end, I opted for the default setting, which I guess means that Cranky Watermelon actually knows what they are doing.
I will usually play up to two full games although The Squire usually wants to move on to something different by the time the first game is completed as very rarely is it a complete blowout with any one player beating everyone by more than five kills. As a single-player game, two games are about my absolute limit because killing bots by yourself is only so much fun for only so long. It would definitely be a lot more fun as a couch co-op party game, which is probably how it was intended to be played.
~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Yeah But They Don't Wave
P.S. The game does have a "Save Video" feature at the end of every match, I had been under the impression that it saved the entire 30+ second round, but it only saved the last 3 or seconds. And while I was obviously able to find the videos at one point (because they are included here) the Amazon game client saves them not in the same folder the game files are saved in, but somewhere else entirely. I saved a couple of additional videos leading up to this article, but I have been unable to remember where they are saved. Which is all different than where the Steam Client saves the "Save Video" videos. Just wanted to throw that out there.
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