Sakeworld PS5 Review 5/10 "Outsider art that’s crowbarred its way onto the PlayStation Store" 👊 @pixelhunted @Sakeforever15 #IndieGame #GameDev

Sakeworld is objectively not a good game. This side-scrolling brawler boasts some of the worst combat mechanics I’ve played in years, janky animation, repetitive stage design and generally feels like something that might have popped up on Newgrounds twenty years ago.

But - and this is a big but - it’s interesting. And interesting goes a long way.

The game’s graphics are drawn from the art of 15-year-old Jack Phoenix, who was killed in a tragic traffic accident in Venice, California in 2015. Phoenix was a prodigious artist on the cusp of making it big and right before his death received a commission to work with a skateboarding company and indie movie studio Illegal Civilization.

To honour Jack’s memory his friends and family created the Sake brand, producing clothing and art based on his sketchbooks. Now, seven years after his death, they’ve tapped into Jack’s love of gaming with a tribute to Streets of Rage and Golden Axe, with the environments and enemies created from his art.

The resulting game is… well it’s a lot. Your choice of characters is formed of rappers Chief Keef, Trippie Red, D Savage, Yung Bans and Rucci, who must journey through warped environments tainted by the dimensional intervention of ‘Sake World’. This means squaring

off against leering floating heads, grotesquely detailed demonic bosses, rabbit-headed freaks, and a giant baby that’s a nightmare on stumpy legs.

Levels are split into two halves, the first is set in ‘the real world’, seeing you punch and blast your way through the streets of La Brea, Venice Beach, Brooklyn or, uh, The North Pole. Beat that stage’s boss and they’ll transport you to the Sake-ized take on the level, which features more disturbing enemies and a nauseating puke-coloured landscape. Defeat that stage’s horrible boss and rinse and repeat until you see the end of the game.

Few games have left me feeling as queasy as Sakeworld. The heavy underground hip-hop soundtrack is overpowering, especially if you’ve got a neighbour-annoyingly powerful bass speaker, the dialogue is wall-to-wall non-sequitur Lynchianisms and the already monstrous artwork is given a whole new discomforting dimension by the herky-jerky paper doll animation. 

I began playing the game at midnight and was left with my jaw dangling around my knees as I struggled to process a mini-game that demands you “wait until you see the Jesus head appear then press X. If you press X too late, or while there is not a Jesus head on the screen it counts as a miss”. Okay, uh, fine. I’ll um, do that.

It’s a unique experience and like nothing else that I’ve ever played. But can that really make up forSakeworld being such a shoddy beat-em-up?

We’re living in a new golden era for the genre, with the charge led by Dotemu’s incredible double-whammy of Streets of Rage 4 and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge. But if those games are the genre’s equivalent of polished blockbusters, Sakeworld is a micro-budgeted indie horror nasty.

Some of my favourite games (Nier, Deadly Premonition, Raw Danger, Lollipop Chainsaw)

 are way more “interesting” than traditionally “good”, making up for dodgy graphics, mechanics, and controls on the strength of their aesthetic, ambition, and imagination.

Sakeworld falls into a similar category, though you’ll have to come at it with an open mind to get anything out of it.

The moment-to-moment experience of playing Sakeworld isn’t remotely fun or enjoyable, but it’s such an odd duck that I can’t help but appreciate it.

Individual mileage is going to vary massively, but I’ll say one thing for it: the two mystifying hours I spent playingSakeworld are going to stick in my memory far longer than the 80+ hours I spent trudging through the dull-as-ditchwater Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.

All of which makes giving it a numeric score difficult. It’s inarguably a bad video game, but as a piece of outsider art that’s crowbarred its way onto the PlayStation Store?

I kinda love it.