Video Game Review: Hyper Jam

Hyper Jam

Bit Dungeon

Multiplayer Arena Brawler

Nintendo Switch

Hyper Jam is… an odd game to review in the middle of a global quarantine, because I get the sense it’s primarily meant to be played as a party game. To sum up, it’s a fast-paced arena brawler where matches are split up into rounds that last about thirty seconds each at the absolute maximum. Between rounds players get to choose perks to power up their character from a pool of 2 to 4 options, depending on how many players are in the match, and the drafting order is decided by current score placements – last place gets first pick. During a round, players can dash, parry, and use any of five randomly spawning weapons (or just their fists) while they try to either reduce their enemies to a bloody mess or send them falling to their deaths.

Hyper Jam can be played either online or locally, with a small range of game modes that all revolve around the same basic formula of “hit hard and hit first”. Online is fun, though as it is an online video game you will of course run into your fair share of bad sports – not something the devs can exactly do anything about, but it’s as persistent an issue here as anywhere else. I’m not sure I ever got into an online match that started with four players – usually I’d get matched up against one or two other people and then the match would fill up while in progress and the newcomer would get a small boost start of points and perks depending on how far in everyone else was. It’s weird, but not necessarily bad or unfair. As I am currently sheltering in place, I was unable to really test the local multiplayer except against the extremely easy bots, though since there’s an option for private online matches you can still play with friends as we continue trying to ride out this pestilence. I assume that Hyper Jam is fun with friends, but again, I can’t confirm one way or the other.

There was one major point of frustration I had with the game, which was a map called Skyline. It consists of one very small, nearly square platform surrounded on all sides by a bottomless pit that is entirely too easy to fall and/or get pushed into. This maybe wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for two particular perks which increase knockback and let players confuse opponents, respectively, thus making the map very frustrating to play on if you happen to get unlucky.

Beyond that, there’s really not much to the game. The roster consists of four admittedly somewhat colorful characters, but the selection is purely cosmetic and there’s only one lady which was a definite drawback for me. There’s a rudimentary leveling system for skins and taunt voice lines, which I think is actually good. These days too many games try to encourage longevity with loot boxes, so it’s nice to see something where the main draw is just the fun of the gameplay itself. The graphics are nice, with a cool-but-generic cyberpunk aesthetic, and the sound design is similarly unremarkable.

If you’re into arena brawlers then you could do worse, but a lack of content makes it hard to recommend this game too strongly. What’s there is good, but there just isn’t that much of it.