Contract Killer

Contract Killer

Contract Killer builds on retro arcade beat ‘em ups and paper aesthetics with chaotic combos, boss fights, hand-crafted pixel visuals, an original, jazzy soundtrack, and an emphasis on cooperation. Tackle the comical campaign with up to 4 players, unlock skins and new characters, fight against your friends, or try to survive an endless horde mode!

CAMPAIGN

When the legendary Erase-Sir was defeated by the Contract of all contracts, his minions took over, binding thousands to their legal demise. It’s up to Leadhead and his crew to traverse different worlds, defeat the bosses that rule them, and erase the final signature!

CHARACTERS

Meet the cast, each with their own unique move sets and skins:

Leadhead - The pencil mascot himself. This all-around fighter is best known for his angry attitude and furious fighting style.

Penn - Ink it up with this vengeful city native who will stop at nothing to return his hometown to its former glory.

Mark - This clumsy combatant always has a white flag in hand… just don’t expect him to surrender.

Pomp - A pretentious paintbrush who treats every attack as a photo opportunity. Pompadours will never NOT be in style.

KEY FEATURES

● Up to 4 player co-op across all modes

Unlock new skins for your favorite character

● Experience the Story of Leadhead and his crew and defeat epic bosses

● Fight endless waves of contracts in Horde Mode with the help of various power-ups

● Challenge your friends in player versus player Battle Mode to test your skills

● Use an extensive kit of attacks for all your contract-killing goodness

● Master each character’s jabs, claps, grabs, ground-pounds, dashes, and projectiles

● Take on various corporate lackeys each with distinct behaviors and weaknesses to learn

ABOUT PAPERBOY GAMES

Created by Alex Garza, Aiden Jauffret, Matthew Lawrence, and Leon Yang


Read More: Best Beat 'em up 2.5D Games.


Contract Killer on Steam

Lost Castle / 失落城堡

Lost Castle / 失落城堡

this is only the second review i have ever wrote for a game and its my first good one. i just felt like i needed to take the time to make a solid shout out to the creators of this game. i bought this game a couple years ago for $10 USD. becuase i was looking for something to waste time for a day or two and it was so cheap. now granted i have been a gamer for over 30 years im an old gamer and i would say im not the best but im a 8/10 and enjoy hard games both pve and pvp . now about lost castle, this game is just great.

Real player with 174.0 hrs in game


Read More: Best Beat 'em up Side Scroller Games.


All right, I’ve played this game long enough to review it, and I’ve to say it has gone above expectations for an old school hack’n’slash where rng changes the playstyle in every game. Drawings and artwork is relatively simple but detailed, offering a good presentation, particularly bosses in their intros (it’s boring in the long run but they aren’t long or tedious and they can be skipped).

Pros:

-Game is fairly optimized, loading quickly and fps doesn’t drop even with a big number of enemies on screen even in old laptops.

Real player with 120.8 hrs in game

Lost Castle / 失落城堡 on Steam

Sacrifice Your Friends

Sacrifice Your Friends

Basically, this is the mechanics of overcooked mixed with the gameplay ideas of Gang Beasts. It super fun to dash around use and throw the weapons, some weapons are a little more useful than others, but they are all counterable. It controls well. A bunch of cool little stuff to unlock, like hats and characters, a bunch of different powerful gods to play, all with different gameplay styles. A whole bunch of beautifully designed maps/artwork, and a whole bunch of other stuff to explore. A great and simple versus game that is definitely worth picking up.

Real player with 16.4 hrs in game


Read More: Best Beat 'em up Lovecraftian Games.


This is an amazingly fun item-arena brawler. The closest games I would compare it to are the Bomberman series and Killer Queen Black.

Your character avatar has no impact on your move set, which consists of punching, grabbing/activating an item, and throwing an item. Your associated Ancient One cult (Cthulhu, Dagon, and Nyarlathotep right now) does have a slightly altered move set, which are fitting for the time-limited avatar transformations (similar to a Smash Bros. Smash Ball). The game moves at such a frantic, hilariously fast and fun pace that it doesn’t need more than this.

Real player with 5.3 hrs in game

Sacrifice Your Friends on Steam

99Vidas

99Vidas

tl;dr: It is ok-ish but Steam has better and cheaper Beat’em up.  

Buy only if you love the podcast and you are familiar with Brazilian culture. Or you are going to be missing a lot of the context.

Pros:

  • 4 players (local/coop)

  • Enemies behavior are quite nice

  • Nice maps

  • Nice idea of mechanics

  • Nice combos

  • They managed to do a lot for the game compared on what my friend told em they spend on it.

Cons:

  • It gets repetitive pretty fast. Including the Enemies behavior that I liked during my first play.

Real player with 38.6 hrs in game

How to not make your sh!tty game:

  • Don’t make enemies have invincible attacks that can connect any time, even when you are mashing the button as fast as you can to avoid being hit.

  • Don’t let enemies chain-attack you, one after another so you lose almost your entire health bar in 3 seconds.

  • Don’t give every single f#$king enemy a running attack that they spam at you from the other side of the screen, and even offscreen.

  • Don’t make bosses like if they were stupid minigames where you can only attack every 30 seconds or so, after all the programmed attacks he does are spammed first.

Real player with 18.7 hrs in game

99Vidas on Steam

Last Slice

Last Slice

Pizza went from a nice time at any pizzeria to an illegal hard drug within just a year. Why was pizza made illegal, what happened to the president, and who’s behind it all? Together with some friends and unlikely allies you deliver pizza, track down your orderers, and evade (or beat up) those who will relentlessly try to take your pizza.

Last Slice on Steam

Glitchrunners

Glitchrunners

Update: Sadly, this game was abandoned by its developers, who simply vanished. There are no updates or support for this game and thus I can no longer recommend it.

Original review: I’ve been looking for another party game to add to my collection, and I loved the concept immediately upon reading it.

The Glitchrunner mode runs on a points system rather than lives: The Architect gets points for killing the runners, the runners get points for wrecking up the place, successfully getting the cube and holding onto the cube.

Real player with 1.7 hrs in game

10/10 would throw a car at my friends again.

Really enjoyable party game with friends!

Real player with 0.9 hrs in game

Glitchrunners on Steam

Son of a Witch

Son of a Witch

Originally, I found this game on the the Nintendo store while browsing for local multiplayer games I could enjoy with my kids. I was drawn to it due to the above but also due to ts great art style and the randomness each game offered. Being an avid Diablo fan going on decades, this really appealed to me.

My three girls and I have a blast playing this and there are not a lot of buttons to remember so the basics are easy to pick up for younger children. I have beaten barbarian challenges with my 3 year old and shes even saved me! Although her favorite is the Alchemist so technically her “friend” saved me.

Real player with 226.9 hrs in game

All around a great game.

TLDR: Magic has 10x more potential than melee and archery. the +1% magic per cast potion needs to be scrapped.

My only gripe with the game atm is that magic can be massively overpowered late game. I have finished all 7 acts (the last being the desert) multiple times now as a magic user, and probably wouldn’t have even needed to look at the screen to beat the final boss (which would be really hard as melee/archer).

The potion that gives +1% bonus magic everytime you cast a spell can be so easily abused. If you get it early on you can just hold onto a voodoo doll (or anything will a low magic cost) and spam it.

Real player with 149.7 hrs in game

Son of a Witch on Steam

Anti Frank’s Wrath

Anti Frank’s Wrath

Anti Frank is unleashing his wrath on the universe! Play by yourself or with a few friends locally to take down hoards of zombies and stop Anti Frank! Play as one of four unique characters and buy new upgrades and weapons as you rid the universe of zombies.

Anti Frank’s Wrath is a top-down arcade shoot-em up based in the futuristic 1980’s. It supports 4 player local co-op (or steam remote play).

Anti Frank's Wrath on Steam

Die for Valhalla!

Die for Valhalla!

Die for Valhalla! is an amazing combination of rogue-lite and side-scrolling beat-em-up style game that has amazing graphics and catchy music. This game is absolutely huge with so much continuous slaughtering fun!

There are two different playing modes, the first is essentially an arcade mode with a larger world where there are a ton of procedurally generated side-scrolling beat-em-up levels. Your goal is hack, smash, and slash your way to the end of the levels and defeat all of the enemies along the way. The other mode is essentially a rogue-lite, more difficult, with permadeath. Your choices matter a bit more because everything could mean life and death. (Kind of funny given the premise of the game.)

Real player with 16.1 hrs in game

What a gem! $9-12 of hack n slash fun!

Fans of “Rampage knights” and “Castle Crashers” this is a great game for you .

Die for Valhalla follows the same pace, environments and formula as castle crashers with quite a bit more attention to skill point allocation and character development.

This game, while a fun multi-player, still shines with an entertaining singleplayer mode. This is often not the case for hack n slash beat em up games. You start by picking a spirit who represents a season. As that spirit, you can possess objects or revivable vikings to fight and dominate the battlefield in silly ways. Each viking represents a class or style of fighting with special moves. Pets can be found on some maps by defending a point (warning the shrines health will be your pets health, and yes pets can die). Hopefully pets can be permantly unlocked, as they feel somewhat useless at the moment acting as dumb damage sponges. If you leave a map to the overworld view, you have the option to unlock clan houses that contain various types of vikings and bonus perks.

Real player with 13.3 hrs in game

Die for Valhalla! on Steam

Fist Puncher

Fist Puncher

One of my favorite beat ‘em up indie choices. It sure brings back that brawler old school fun like Streets of Rage, Double Dragon nostalgia.

Game gives a variety of character and in-game collectibles, you get to level characters through and assign skills to them unlocking special moves - that was somewhat of a pleasant surprise for a brawler, it adds a bit to the experience depending on which one you choose. When it comes to gameplay, not much else outside of kicking and punching; special moves are tailored to character design, it’s all related to humor rather than skills. I love the retro-style graphics, love the variety of challenge styles (some are timed areas, some are on top of cars and whatnot), and the one thing I enjoyed the most was the humor. The nudist beach was certainly unexpected, yet hilarious.

Real player with 28.2 hrs in game

The Little Brawler That Could (but probably shouldn’t have)

My girlfriend and I liked this game at first: there were unlocks, some of the humor worked, and the light rpg elements and combat were functional. We love Double Dragon, River City Ransom, Golden Axe, TMNT, Streets of Rage etc., so this seemed like a sure bet at the time.

After a while we decide we like it, and want to show our friends. But we can’t include our friends because that would mean grinding up their characters to our level so we could play (levels are attached to the 4 players, not to the characters themselves). So now we have to leave our friends out and just play by ourselves, but its no big deal. Now combat is starting to get stale and nothing is really jumping out at us. Then we decide we want to be daring and maybe try out one of the many new characters we unlocked, but oh bummer, they start at level 0 and would take hours to grind. Now we are trapped, just the two of us, playing a game where we aren’t really free to use the characters we unlock with out going through the monotony of grinding. We went through level after level, unlocking all kinds of cards (achievments), characters, and secret items/areas, but really all we wanted to do was have fun. Packing in all this content doesn’t really matter unless the game offers some kind of entertainment.

Real player with 19.0 hrs in game

Fist Puncher on Steam