The Backlog: Slap City

Slap City is a platform fighter akin to Super Smash Brothers, Multi-Versus, or Nickelodeon All Star Brawl. You choose from a roster of characters, and in this game specifically from Ludosity studio, and fight on various stages with the goal being to hit other players off the level. The more damage you take, the easier it is to knock a player off. Unlike other platform fighters there are no items players can pick up and use on opponents.

The game has the usual modes, last man standing, team battle, free for all, and a story mode. But one mode is unique, called slap ball, which has players working to hit a beach ball into each other's goals to get points within a time limit. Each time a player hits the ball the potential points for the goal goes up, but if the ball hits the ground the point total goes back to 1. There weren’t as many stages to pick from compared to the other modes, but each one was also different when it came to where the goal was located, requiring a different strategy for each. I liked this mode as it serves up something unique players don’t usually see in platform fighters. 

I originally asked one of my best friends from Oregon to play with me, but to our surprise the online functionality didn’t work on both ends, so I needed to make a last minute change and asked my wife to play with me. We played a lot of slap ball and team battles, I couldn’t tell you exactly how many. But each match can be from 2-8 minutes depending on the mode. We both won most of the time, however we found there is a computer difficulty that is extremely hard, that, no matter how many times we tried, even if a level 9 computer helped us, we failed to win. I’d say the most memorable gameplay experience was whenever my wife got excited about doing anything in the game. She doesn’t play video games that much so it's always fun to see her enjoying them. 

The mechanics themselves are really fun, and though I’ve only really played Super Smash Brothers, I’ve heard this game is really good compared to other platform fighters. There isn’t a huge roster, but all of the characters feel unique and fun to play as, for example, a girl with watermelons for boxing gloves. I wasn’t able to play the story mode as I thought it would be a single player experience only, but I could see myself going back and playing alone just because of how fun the gameplay is.