Turning a Sweet Tooth into a Cavity
God bless the guilty pleasure. We know it’s bad. We know it’s bad for us, and we still love it. We love it so much we can ignore our shame. So what if “Barbie Girl” by Aqua sucks? You’ll still lip-synch to it. We also know everyone steals extra samples on the sample tray. It’s a special type of sin, but God forgives us. And just think of the last time you watched the Notebook while drowning in a tub of ice cream and tears? Never? Liar.
A Gummy’s Life is my guilty pleasure. It’s beautifully mediocre, and I adore it. I grow bored after 15 minutes, but I show it to almost anyone who comes over to play video games. It unabashedly preys on the gamers who crave couch multiplayer, and its presentation waffles between half-baked and r/CrappyDesign. I don’t regret buying it, but you might. It’s disgustingly magical, like how school bathrooms always smell like urine despite how frequently they’re cleaned. And that’s my review on school bathrooms.
What is it?
Only A Gummy’s Life could get eight players in one small room, have them beat the juices out of each other, and still make it out with a T rating. Across 15 stages, your one goal is to be the last one standing. You will kick, punch, and head-butt your opponents into unconsciousness and then throw their bodies out-of-bounds before they wake up. Alternatively, you can bash them until they’re bled dry. If you don’t finish the job, the stage often will, whether it be death by zombies or centrifugal force.
Each stage acts as a round, with the last three remaining players earning points. Both Free for All and Team Death Match play out as you would expect, and a sudden death option ensures your gummies start losing juice if the contenders overstay their welcome. King of the Hill tasks you with collecting the most candy and is about as appetizing as the Fun Dip dipstick (incidentally, known as “White Hard Candy Sticks” elsewhere). Meanwhile, Hot Potato has you passing around an STD through physical contact which causes the carrier to explode, and whoever doesn’t get exploded wins.
Outside of these modes, you have a training option which puts you and three computers in a lobby to duke it out forever. Online play looks very similar because you’ll be stuck in this lobby until someone shows up. A Gummy’s Life’s online community was pretty much dead on arrival, although you may catch a random player every month or so. There is no separate single-player mode on offer, so bring your buddies or learn to love bots.
What’s good?
- Anyone can enjoy the mayhem, and inexperience and idiocy increase entertainment value. If you play with the full eight players (as you should), each round devolves into chaos. It doesn’t matter if you don’t know how to play. Run, button-mash, and pray, and you might just win anyway. A Gummy’s Life mixes absurdity and violent catharsis for a gratifying experience, at least initially.
- The stages bring variety to how you die, adding that special zest to the gameplay that we so sorely lack in our everyday lives. One stage finds you climbing up a set of stairs while lava rises and rocks crash down upon you. Another features a honeycomb floor which drops out from under you if players occupy one spot for too long. A third lays out conveyor belts and is pretty bland, but if you die, you come back as a box, so that’s nifty. Most arenas have a unique gimmick, and learning to work with them is one of the few reasons to keep coming back to a Gummy’s Life.
What’s bad?
- The controls are awful. At first, it’s funny how difficult it is to control your gummy, but funny turns to frustrating when you try to develop any sort of mastery. Each button has a different action based on whether you tap or hold the button, but the action can change based on how long you hold. For instance, each trigger button controls an arm. Tapping causes you to flail your arms feebly, but holding the buttons briefly allows you to charge harder punches. Hold for too long, however, and now you’re grabbing whatever is closest to you. The controls are overly complex and frequently unresponsive, and for a game this simple, they’re not worth the effort to tame.
- A Gummy’s Life becomes stale as quickly as a Peep left on the counter. Interestingly, each character has different stats, and you would think this would incentivize players to master a certain gummy. However, the aforementioned control issues discourage true competitive play, and the stage hazards often place more emphasis on luck rather than skill. As for content, you can experience all that is offered in under an hour. There are unlockable characters theoretically, but I never came across one during my playtime.
- The presentation is wildly inconsistent. Although the stages and characters look fine, the menus appear hastily drawn and colored with a garish palette. Poppy melodies last far less than 30 seconds but loop continually, recalling your fondest memories of “It’s a Small World,” but the sound effects squish and splort well enough. Winning results in little fanfare before your booted back to the menu. I don’t expect red carpets to be rolled out for me, but this suspiciously stained motel floor could use some sprucing up.
- The game is buggy. Slowdown pops up sporadically, characters die inexplicably, and one stage (“A Frog’s Life”) will crash the entire game 90% of the time. For a game this small, a bug that big is egregious.
What’s the verdict?
You’d be forgiven for thinking a Gummy’ s Life is barely palatable, and to an extent, I want you to think this. For the large majority of gamers, this game is the equivalent of savoring used gum from under a desk (seeing how it is a poor man’s Gang Beasts, which isn’t that great either). However, if you have a good selection of victims (i.e. friends and family), the first 15 or so minutes of playing with new gamers is a blast. No one knows what they’re doing; they’re laughing up a storm; and it’s just fun. If you can space out your play sessions, a Gummy’s Life could make for a great party game.
Arbitrary Statistics:
- Score: 6
- Time Played: Over 5 hours
- Number of Players: 1-4
- Games Like It on Switch: Human: Fall Flat, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate