Take Super Smash Bros., squeeze it onto your phone or tablet, replace the Nintendo characters with cute monsters and in-app purchases, and you’ve got multiplayer brawler Fright Fight from publisher Appsolute.
Kahn the werewolf joins Grim the reaper, Carmilla the vampire and Hugo the yeti in the game’s initial cast of characters. Kahn was the obvious choice for me, but more discerning players might want to take a moment to consider the other options – once you make your selection, the other three require payment to unlock.
Characters, in-game currency, XP boosters… pretty much everything in the game requires payment to unlock. The developers have chosen to exploit the in-app purchase mechanism to the extent that it could reasonably be called nickel & diming. In an act of mercy they’ve also included an option to unlock the “full game” for $14.99, which seems steep for an app, but seems justified by its positive reviews.
This game’s been out since early 2014 and I kept not posting about it because (confession time) I suck at fighting games of any kind. Calling me “button masher” would be a compliment. I’m not enough of a gamer to give an incisive review, but I will say that the game looks great, sounds pretty good (some of the sound effects are repetitive to the point of annoyance) and controls surprisingly well via touch. I didn’t like the complete lack of single-player mode, but if you have some friends to play with and a high tolerance for “pay to get this feature” prompts (or a few extra bucks), this might be the game for you.
Fright Fight is available via iTunes, Ouya (which is still a thing!), Google Play and Amazon.