☆ Review: Fat Mask "one more match!" ☆

Fat Mask is a puzzle-brawler which has been developed by Montreal’s Paper Cult, this team of two talented gentlemen people have created a great fast-paced title that’s well worth a blast with friends.

The indie developer world on PC has been the saviour of local multiplayer over the last few years when the local style of competitive / coop play was on it’s neglected backside.

Whilst recent news suggests that local play hasn’t been entirely forgotten, this game is a fantastic example of what offline multiplayer can truly offer.

Fat Mask combines the frantic game play of Towerfall with the graphical sensibilities of Speedrunners (both examples of local multiplayer at its peak). You choose from four characters (including the titular Fast Mask), choose your arena and delve into the game to rack up some serious combo action.

The aforementioned serious combo action is brought into being by picking up the blocks in the game and lining them up in groups of three or more, then keeping in control of them until a timer runs out and you net the points for that combo. This is made more difficult by the other players who will be attempting the same thing as you, the thieving little sausages.

Whilst Fat Mask does have a single player mode which does an admirable job of keeping the game play exciting enough, this is in the same vein as Wrecked on the PS3 (an unbelievably underrated local multiplayer game) in that it’s in the multiplayer modes where the game really shines. Running around the screen, frenetically hurling blocks together and stealing your opponents combos whilst looking after your own is an awesome experience made all the better by the extremely tightly designed gameplay.

The controls are completely stripped back which make the game accessible to all ages, and it’s gently flatulent humour is also family-friendly (the buttons are grab, jump and fart).  Whilst casually looking through some comments on Steam, it was great to see how many people said they played the game with their children or vice versa. There’s no need to over-complicate things here, the game play is solid enough without extraneous additions which could detract from the simplicity of Fat Mask. Don’t get me wrong though, in that simplicity, there is room for some seriously saucy tactics. Holding the ‘grab’ button slows down your movement / descent so you can hurl blocks with pin-point accuracy, you can double-jump, throw blocks at the other player to knock them back (there is no health bar in the game, your only real concern is the timer) and as in the previously mentioned Towerfall, reaching the edge of the screen pops you out of the other side which can come in VERY handy when there are only a precious few seconds on the clock to get those desperately needed final combos.

Summary: 
It’s a breath of fresh air to see a game like this which is built on pure gameplay, colourful, sharp graphics and jaunty music.  

If you don’t have any family or friends to play this with, you probably won’t get as much out of this as you would if you had a few other players gathered around the TV, teasing each other and cursing the winner, demanding ‘one more match’ but then again, that applies to most games, in my eyes.

Arrange a night with a dash of Fat Mask, a pinch of Speedrunners and a twist of Towerfall then sit back and enjoy the heady gaming cocktail.

P.S – Local Multiplayer FO’EVA!

RATING:ICE COOL

Ratings Explained

ICE COOL (Great Game Recommended)

MELTING (Just Falls Short Of Greatness)

MELTED (Not A Recommended Purchase)

Game Link: Steam
Dev Link: Paper Cult

Reviewed By Britt
(from @kingdomofcarts)