Developer: Bit Dragon
Publisher: Bit Dragon
Platforms: PC
Tested on: PC
Hyper Jam – Review
Videogames, you have them in all shapes and sizes, from short Indie platformers to Japanese RPGs that will take many hours to complete. Since games follow certain trends, it isn’t uncommon to see titles inspired by others, but in the case of Hyper Jam it feels that it has deeper roots than expected. Who remembers Mashed, the arena-based combat game where you need to get points by destroying opponents in a last man standing game type. When playing Hyper Jam, we had some good flashbacks to Mashed, and we enjoyed taking the trip down memory lane.
Story
Hyper Jam is set in a 1980s environment and the typical characters like Vance and Max will remind you of the icons of that time. A war veteran, a Miami Vice cop, a ninja and this guy straight from Tron, this is the cast for the battle of the century. In its core, the game has absolutely no story or background, you just start up the game and play battles. It would have been cool to have a bit of backstory to the characters or events, but it doesn’t hamper the gameplay a bit.
Graphics
The game is strongly inspired by the 1980s. Powerful colors combined with famous movie and pop-culture references from the 80s make the overall look quite impressive. Characters all stem from that time zone and have some remarkable features. There are only four characters but each of them has a few skins to make them look even more unique. Although these color changes are not complete overhauls, they are very nicely done. Arenas are either very colorful or have this typical neon darkness to it. The quality of the graphics is amazingly great as well with highly detailed maps, characters, weapons and animations. All of this is an impressive feat for a top-down shooter.
Sound
Not only the looks, but also the music will take you back in time. Great Synthwave music plays on the background while vocal characters taunt their way to victory. In the midst of the mayhem, you can clearly spot who is using which weapon because of the amazingly good sound effects. The only thing that is lacking to make this a tried-and-true arena shooter is an announcer, but it’s not that big of a deal.
Gameplay
Hyper Jam is a top-down arcade shooter that puts up to four contesters into an arena and has them fight it out to see who comes out on top. The match system of Hyper Jam is quite simple, fights are always free-for-all against one, two or three opponents. You select one of the four iconic characters and battle for your life in the ring. You get points by eliminating opponents and staying alive. For example, if Max kills two enemies and gets killed by you, Max will actually stand higher on the scoreboard than you. So, you need to play aggressively and survive to get your score up to 1500 points. When the last character is alive the round will end, points will be awarded to each player that did something worthy and a new round begins after that. A neat feature is that if you manage to trick opponents into killing themselves, their points will get deducted When a player’s score reaches 1500, he needs to survive the next battle to finally win the game. Hence, even if Vance has his score up to the max, you will give others a chance to take the crown by taking him down early on in the next round.
Playing tactically is essential because players and bots alike can and will take revenge upon death. Just like in Mashed, when someone is dead, they can still influence the game by calling in a final strike. This laser strike from heaven invokes tremendous damage to those who get hit by it. Dying first isn’t that bad: at the end of the round, each player gets to pick a perk and those with the lowest score gets to pick first, which balances the odds. Perks greatly alter the game by increasing speed and damage, making initial rounds a bit slower and increasingly hectic.
The fight for survival starts with bare fists, but luckily, many weapons will spawn into the map. You need to pick these up and obliterate your opponent. If you are unarmed, you can still parry attacks and even send rockets and grenades flying back to their sender. Dodging incoming strikes is a great way to get yourself out of harm’s way, but don’t forget that various maps don’t have borders so you can fall out of the playing area. The game responds and controls very well as you have direct feedback to inputs made and even high octane gunfights don’t feel too stressful because of this.
A way that the game rewards their loyal players is by enabling to level up and thus get new skins for characters and taunts. There are only four characters and a handful of maps, but its quick action and fun combat makes this game ideal for quick matches and short breaks. Playing against A.I. is quite fun but can get a bit difficult even on easy settings and fighting against players or friends is even more hilarious because of the hectic structure and intense battles.
Conclusion
Hyper Jam is, as the name implies, a hyper fast game offering amazingly fun combat that doesn’t get too boring after a while. With the random spawns, each fight is unique and you don’t need to panic if you don’t win each round. As long as you survive and put a spoke in the wheel of the winning opponent, you can still be the victor in the end.
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