Just the Boss Fights

Steam is drowning in thousands of lazy, low-effort 2D platformers, and "Just the Boss Fights" is yet another one. I'm not kidding, there's over 17,000 platformers on Steam, almost all of them are garbage, amateur kitbashes. This is not one of the good ones. This platformer seems to have specifically aimed to be worse than most platformers... by design, almost all of the platformer mechanics and level negotiation has been removed completely, in exchange it's just a bunch of single screen "boss fights" of deplorably low quality. So this is a platformer, but worse! This is a tired, outdated experience from a tired, outdated and obsolete game genre. Just a couple of platformers out of literally thousands have any appeal for gamers lately (Super Meat Boy, Hollow Knight etc). This "me too" Steam Direct platformer in a crowded genre offers nothing new. It's "free", but [i]free[/i] doesn't mean [i]good.[/i] This features really godawful pixelcrap "art" instead of real graphics. It's hard to say if this was because the developer didn't have the skill to do the job of creating 3D visuals, or couldn't afford to hire someone who does, but it also doesn't matter. What matters is that thi…

I can see this as an earnest try of a boss-rush retro style game, and clearly a lot of work has been put into it (specially the visuals which I love), sadly for me it just doesn't stick the landing well enough. The changing moveset for the player character would be fine if there was an actual mechanical reason for it, and said moves were more thought out, as it stands some abilities feel way more comfortable to use than others, which kinda makes the player feel 2 things: either longing for a previous move you no longer have or the spamming the one new move you find useful. Theres a reason why games like cuphead start with a very limited pool of moves that then gradually expands, because from the start having 5-6 possible actions is....a lot, and this games feels like that for the entire runtime due to the constant change. Also, and I can't stress this enough, the dialogues, while they may seem funny and quirky at first, get old REALLLY fast, really, reading 20 variations of "I dont know whats happening" coming from the protagonist on the same piece of interection is a slog. I really want to like this game but there are a lot of minor (and not so minor) things keeping it down, st…

Just the Boss Fights is a compact 2D action RPG that takes one of the most exciting components of traditional role-playing games and builds almost the entire experience around it. Rather than asking players to travel through sprawling maps, defeat countless ordinary enemies, collect mountains of equipment, and grind for experience before reaching the next major encounter, the game cuts directly to its bosses. Developed and published by Tactical Toad LLC, it is a deliberately small-scale project that uses this unusual structure for both gameplay and comedy, while gradually suggesting that there may be a more suspicious explanation for why the hero's adventure has been reduced to a boss rush. The central idea works because the protagonist is just as confused about the situation as the player. He appears to have been dropped into an adventure with important pieces missing. Other characters seem familiar with him, portions of his memory are absent, and his equipment has a habit of changing unexpectedly. These details turn what initially looks like a simple parody of RPG design into a small mystery. The game's glitches and inconsistencies are not merely cosmetic jokes, since discoverin…

The first fight was good, and the premise is fun, but I think the lack of explanation about your gear going into battle is more frustrating than fun.

Fun premise, controls and style are all a little wonky, but that fits the vibe and premise perfectly. There's a lot of room to expand on the idea, but for what it is - it's an enjoyable hour. Look forward to whatever it is you guys do next.

A really nice hidden gem.