A Gummy’s Life is a good game, too bad no one is actually playing it.
The funny thing with this review, I was supposed to play the game on the PS5 early so that I could have the review up for launch. However, due to a slight mixup, I got to play the game two weeks after its release and well, no one is actually playing it.
I did, however, manage to find just one lobby where there were 3 other players active and had a couple of matches.
A Gummy’s Life is a party game, similar to Gang Beasts, maybe too similar, where you can punch, kick, headbutt, and throw other players off the arena to win. It’s a wacky game with wacky physics cause you know, that’s why you play this kind of game.
While the fighting controls and hitboxes could be a little tighter for a little bit more control, the thing I liked the most was the creative designs of the many different arenas where all the fighting takes place.
For example, you have a level where you are always on the move as lava rises and if it touches you, you’re out. There’s a faithful recreation of Frogger where fighting takes place on the road where vehicles move left to right and on top of wood trunks floating on the river. On another level, the platforms that form the arena can disappear and you fall to your demise. Another arena is one of those spinning carnival rides that also shifts in different directions which can launch you to the moon. It’s nice to see such great creativity and variety when it comes to the arenas.
A Gummy’s Life includes a couple of game modes. So you have Free 4 All, King of the Hill, Team Deathmatch, and Hot Potato.
Hot Potato is a game of tag where the character that was last tagged blows up. In King of the Hill, the first to collect five marshmallows that spawn around the arena wins. And the other two modes are pretty much self-explanatory. You can also play offline against bots or local multiplayer, and while the latter it’s always fun, none of the offline modes count towards the unlocks.
The characters are based on gummies and jelly sweets and their design is good with many customizations to unlock and try. You only unlock new stuff by playing the multiplayer, offline play doesn’t count. That’s somewhat understandable, but when there’s no one to play with in multiplayer, then what happens?
A Gummy’s Life is a cool game, but just two weeks after release, I had a problem finding other people playing it online. Now if the game gets a free trial on one of the platforms, it might get a resurgence of players and since it has Cross-Play, that might make it worth picking it up. Or if you want a local party game, this would be a great time. Other than those two scenarios, it’s tough to recommend this game at this moment. Thanks for reading.
The game was reviewed on PS5 using a code provided by the publisher. A Gummy's Life is out now for Switch, PC, Playstation and Xbox.
