Boomerang Fu is an excellent game to play with friends, so long as they’re in the same room as you. The simple but addictive gameplay loop and pleasant aesthetic makes local multiplayer a blast, I just wish there was online so I could play with others.
Boomerang Fu
Developer: Cranky Watermelon
Price: $15
Platform: Nintendo Switch (reviewed) and PC
MonsterVine was supplied with a Switch code for review
I first played Boomerang Fu at last year’s GDC with a few of my friends and co-workers at MonsterVine. I found it to be a pleasant multiplayer game that I could play for quite some time, and now that the full game has been released, I still hold that position.
Boomerang Fu allows up to six players to murder one another in a rather adorable fashion. You choose a character from a variety of foods with faces (such as a banana, an avocado, a piece of sushi, and a coffee mug.) You’re placed in one of thirty varied arenas with one goal: to wipe out your opponents using deadly boomerangs and crazy power-ups. It’s a simple set-up, but this simplicity is what makes it so fun to jump-in. You try to get a certain number of kills to win by flinging your deadly boomerang around to try to bisect foes.
You can play free-for-all, in teams, or a “Golden Boomerang” keep-away mode, but I found free-for-all to be the most fun. You can play against bots or real people, but you can’t play online. This is a shame, as there’s no arcade mode or content outside of versus mode. This means all you can do is face off against local friends or bots, which provides little variety in the game for anyone playing by themselves or with unavailable friends. Having more modes or being able to play with others online would have been a perfect remedy for this, especially with how distant things are right now.
The exciting music and clean visuals of Boomerang Fu add to the game, especially the freezeframe and slowdown that occurs when you get a kill. The spill effects that come with kills (depending on what food you are) are a nice touch as well, as they add some carnage to the overall cutesy look.
The Final Word
Though a lack of online play does hurt the game a bit, Boomerang Fu is a very simple and fun multiplayer game that anyone can easily jump into and enjoy.
MonsterVine Review Score: 3.5 out of 5 – Fair
