Sometimes Life Just Minigame Dropkick in The Face (Knuckle Sandwich)

Knuckle Sandwich is a Earthbound like rpg with Warioware minigames, developed by Andrew Brophy, in it you play as average guy whose life has turned upside down due to cosmic events.

The game starts with your character just arriving at Bright Town and seeking a job opportunity at the Job Center, what follows is instead of a usual job interview, but a game show where you are present with a number of opportunities where you don’t succeed at any of them, but no worries you later land a job at the local burger joint Gorilla Burger, the owner is a little rude, and it’s not paying zilch, but hey a job is a job. The first day don’t really don’t go well, while throwing the trash put some guy just appears out of the nowhere and have a knife fight with you, and he end up dead, but no worries, your Boss help you out to get rid of the body by turning him into hamburgers, that sure will not lead to some trauma. 

The second day is not much better, then again after throwing the trash out some guy just bust through the wall of the place and calls you basically the antichrist and punches you hard in the face giving you a permanent black eye. The next day things get a little better when three other weirdos de decide to show up to land a job, Thea, Echo and Dolus, you quickly bond with them after your Boss just leave the business in your hands and vanish, and later you discover a ghost is hunting the place and also an impossible freezer dungeon in the back. Did I also mention the Goblin that keeps appearing in your dreams and saying that you are his agent in some cosmic mission ?!

That’s the world of Knuckle Sandwich, it’s whack !! and it gets more whack the further that it goes. I found out this game through a really whiny review in Rock, Paper, Shotgun website, I enjoyed playing Earthbound and Mother 3, in fact I did a game diary when I played here in this blog, it’s first years stuff don’t go looking for it, and I did thoroughly enjoy playing Warewario in the GBA emulator out of interesting, so here is a game that joining both of them ! What could be better !!?

The whiny part of that review was that the reviewer found that the combat in the game is not the most balanced and there is truth to that, and that the minigames were too hard and that’s the whining !! Okay let’s look at how combat works here, first you have normal attacks that come in three types, the first one you have a two parallels bars with another moving bar in each, so you have to press the button when your attack prompt is on the moving bar, outside of that the attack will miss, pretty simple, there is also a critical attack opportunity if you hit the small white space that is moving in the attack bar. Later in the game these bars appear with mines in it, so you have to switch from bar to bar to get a clean attack without taking damage. The second is a circular bar with two circular in each side, attacks happen when you press the button inside of this circles, you can combo attacks until you mess up of course the attack prompt move faster each hit, The third type is similar to the second, it’s a vertical bar with a white spot this time. It’s very simple, but they do very little damage.

Now the minigames, enemies attack with usual normal attacks, that you can dodge if time right with tell of each enemy, just like the Mario & Luigi games, but the most of the time enemies will use special attacks that are these minigames, most of them are just fast reacting button press, and they do get more difficult as you beat then and the game progress, by the end of the game all minigames are in the hard setting, there are not that difficult, the problem comes with the damage, betting one of these with being hit will cause damage to the enemies, and if get hit you get damage instead of course, the problems comes that the damage is pretty irregular from minigame to minigame, from one dealing high damage to other dealing no damage whatsoever mostly to the enemies, you get nearly more than half your health in damage by the middle of the game !! it’s somewhat of a frustrating gameplay, it’s feasible, but frustrating in how long some fights can take later down the line. 

Other problem that I found is the inventory, yes there is item management in this game just like the earthbound games, but I don’t remember Earthbound having so little space for items, you can carry ten items per character, that includes key items and weapons and accessories, so if you need space for a critical item you have to go and store then in a computer somewhere (yes that how you store items here, in a computer, you save with a laundry machine, don’t ask questions) or toss them out, I nearly don’t use items and like to hoard stuff, so it was the least pleasant aspect of the game for me, also, I so that later it was patch a extra pocket menu in the inventory later after release, so the game out be less fun for me at launch !!!

The overall progression of the game is nice, each section of the game have it’s puzzles and challenges that are not to annoying and difficult ( To be fair one of these put me in one inescapable room and the only solution to get out is to shut the game and load the save again, which is not funny !! dick move !!) Soundtrack is pretty funky, which is reminiscent of the Earthbound games to have the same type of soundtrack, with barf sound effects and all !! There is lots of stuff to do as well, despite being a relatively short game, tons of secrets to find out, there is a trophy that just like one person has got it so far !!!

There is a challenge mode that makes the game way more hard, I tried and it’s not fun !! you do like no damage whatsoever, the attack bar is shirk down and moves way too fast, all minigames are on hard always and enemies do way more damage, and just no fun to fight the first enemies of the game for like four minutes each !! so I don’t have the patience for that !!  

Despite how whack the story is at first, it kinda loses traction later down the line, it’s one of the game's least strong points. Overall, Knuckle Sandwich is a pretty good game that doesn’t really stand out for any particular characteristic and it’s enjoyed by a very niche audience like myself !