Gang Beasts

Reviewers: Ferdy Pratama, Ieuan Ignatius, Aaron Mihardja, and Albert Darmawan

Do you want to fight like gangs swags with no bones and rubber-like body? Have you wanted to play a wrestling game? Or have you ever watch movies with gangs actions? Well, Gang Beasts is for you! This is not just another wrestling video game which bounded with the realms of reality, it is a crazy and wacky world where anything can happen, with endless combination of wrestling styles and taunting. This creates a very unique playstyles and of course, a lot of fun!

This game will be reviewed and analyzed using the MDA framework which comprises of the game’s mechanics, dynamics and aesthetics. The mechanics are of the base components of the game such as its rules, basic controls, algorithm and data structure of the game engine. The interactions of the mechanics towards the players are what the dynamics component of the game is for. Last of all the aesthetics are the emotions evoked within the player when playing the game.

Game Mechanics:
Gang Beasts consists of several rounds in a match that involves 2-8 ragdoll characters, where they can compete in two different modes. The game modes for Gang Beasts are survival mode and waves mode. There are several movement controls for each character such as walking, jumping, and various arms, leg and body movements and the players can use these controls to remove enemies off of the arena.

In the survival mode, the players must brawl with each other to throw each other off the arena. There are many different types of arena, with each arena provides its unique dynamics. When a player falls out of the arena (that is, if the y coordinate of the player is less than the y coordinate of the ground), they lose a life. In each round, the maximum number of survived character is one. Just for additional information, it is possible that every player loses a life in one round. The last player standing must survive for as long as a few seconds, if they are not able to then they will lose a life before the next round begins. A round is when the brawl resets in the same map whereas a match is when the map has changed and all players lives have been reset. Only one player will win in this mode. The winning condition is when all players except the winner have lost all of their lives. If all players have lost all of their lives without a survivor then it becomes a tie and a new match begins.

In waves mode, the game creates a survival situation where all players becomes one team and requires them to beat waves of enemies. This mode seems to be under further development, as there is only one stage called “rooftop”. Every x rounds, x amount of enemies enters the rooftop from a door and the player must remove all enemies to proceed to the next round. This means that the amount of enemies increment by one in every new round. When a character falls, he loses his only life and does not respawn until the end of the match. There is no winning condition and you can play as many rounds as you can.

Every character has stamina that is decreased when receiving punches or fall damage. When a character’s stamina has been depleted, the character will knocked out for a few seconds. A player can only grip a non-player object for a limited time before being forced to let go.

As the game is still in its early development stages there is bound to be some bugs. Bugs on the survival game mode include some players being able to stay alive even after getting knocked out of the arena. These bugs actually make the players unable to continue to the next round, hence forcing the player to restart the entire match. For the waves mode the next round does not start when players get too close or touches the door that spawns the enemies.

Game Dynamics:
Before the start of a match, we have to determine the rules of the game round: the game mode (the way the player achieves victory at that round), the number of lives, the stage and whether there are an endless amount of rounds. Thereafter the players enters and selects their game character’s costume.

In survival mode, the maps have large varieties ranging from on top of moving trucks to being on a window cleaner platform. Some maps include interactive environments for players to use and explore with. A good example would be the window cleaner arena where players are able to break the rope that is stabilizing the platform. This creates an endless possibility of methods to eliminate players, which makes the game more interactive and unpredictable.

The player is able to string movement controls together in order to create new moves. One example is a character is capable of carrying characters above its head and throw them, using combination of grab and lifting their arms. This allows player to experiment with many moves, hence make the game more unique relative to other games with a similar genre.

There are several bugs in the dynamics component of the game. Two bugs that we noticed are the player get stuck on map by stuck a part of their body with an object and obstruction of vision that make a player able to still alive when actually their character already fell down.

Game Aesthetics:
Gang Beasts is able to deliver experiences that are both fun and competitive. The comedic value the game conveys is through the slapstick wrestling and ragdoll moments during the brawls. For survival mode, players are able to dominate their friends without hard feelings and during waves mode the players can work together to finish the waves and joking around by threatening to throw their friends off the rooftop. The game is rarely taken seriously so that all players are able to have an exciting time together. Even the spectators may enjoy the ludicrous situations that the game characters are hurled into.