Mega Knockdown Early Access Review

In recent years, many fighting games have tried to make themselves more accessible and easier to pick up for the general gaming audience, but few of them have gone beyond the usual format of fighting games to achieve this. At most, we usually see simplified mechanics or alternative input methods.

That's where games like Mega Knockdown come in and show that there's more you can do with the genre.

The premise of Mega Knockdown is exceptionally simple. It takes the core of fighting games, but then adapts them to a turn-based format. This general concept of doing this is not new at this point. It was tried many times in the card game format, with Yomi being perhaps the most well known example, and YOMI Hustle alongside Toribash have gone for something similar, but Mega Knockdown executes this idea in a way that no other game has done in the past.

Instead of abstracting too far from traditional fighting games, they took all the base elements and reinterpreted them in a way that makes sense for this new format. For example, how do you handle movement? Footsies are a fundamental element of the genre, and it's entirely built around constant, nuanced movement. There are many ways to approach this, but Mega Knockdown decided to distill this element to its essentials, and implement grid based system. It's not exceptionally granular, but it's more than enough to replicate the same strategical nuances that appear in any other fighting game.

Every other element flows naturally from this basic framework. Continuing down the line of distilling fighting game concepts, every character has something that defines their role in the system. The grappler, Big Billy, is not a threat from far away. He will have to use his large health pool to get in, especially when it comes to opponents with strong zoning. However, should he get in, you will need some great reads to avoiding eating a command grab or being negated by an armored move.

All the other archetypes are just as recognizable here, but it's important to mention that the game is not limited to recreation, which comes down to how the game handles special moves. To understand that, you first need to know about the controls. Each round is comprised out of players submitting a direction and an action. Your directions are the usual left, right, and up, with down serving as a neutral input. Meanwhile, possible actions include 3 different attack strengths (light, medium, salty), and then block or throw.

Most of the outcomes that you get are fairly intuitive. The attack strengths usually correspond to their speed and range, with some caveats, of course, but certain combinations will activate special moves that can include absolutely anything. A great example of this is Noel. If you press 6C, she will plant a vine seed. On the next turn, this vine might provide you with protection, add damage to another attack, or serve as a poke of its own. Combining this with unique character traits and stats opens up a lot of space for distinct characters and unique gameplay situations in a game that is otherwise incredibly simple. Even though much of the current roster is rather straightforward.

Nevertheless, that doesn't mean that you can't get quite a lot of replayability out of what's already there. The universal underlying system makes it easy to switch between different characters, so you get to constantly shake up the gameplay, and the difference between them is big enough to make matches feel distinct. I also adore the fact that you can very comfortably play this game with just your mouse. If you want to play on a stick you still can, and the game offers sensible layouts for any controller of your choice, but it's hard to beat the comfort of lounging around and playing the game with one hand.

However, there is a caveat here. Playing against the AI does get old fairly quickly. If you understand your character's main strength and have basic fighting game knowledge, just following the general logic of attack strengths and optimal range is enough to beat the AI on hard difficulty. You can mix it up by opting in for faster turn timers, which can be as fast as 1 second, but it only goes so far. In the end, how many people want to play rock paper scissors against a machine? The underlying mechanics in Mega Knockdown are great, and felt well-thought-out even two years ago, but to get the most out of them, you need a human opponent.

While the game does have an online mode, and even supports lobbies, it doesn't exactly have much of a playerbase. If you want to get some matches going, you'll have to find a friend who wants to play it, or visit their official discord, where you will no doubt find someone who would be willing to play. It helps that latency is not exactly an issue here, making it one of the few games where you truly can have a good match with absolutely anyone across the globe.

Another detail that needs to be mentioned is that the game is in Early Access, and probably will be for quite some time, since it's more of a passion project from a very small team. With that said, the gameplay side of things is very much polished, or at the very least it feels polished, which is all that matters. The early access state of the game largely comes through in the form of art assets that aren't finalized. They made a lot of progress since the last time I played the game in 2023 though, and you don't run into rough assets all that often, and the game has also gained a lot of neat QoL addictions, like clean new pop-ups that indicate frame advantage, or occasional tips that will remind you about certain nuances and mechanics.

The game is not asking for a lot either. The base price is merely $10, and if you find yourself outside of the dollar or euro regions, the price tag is quite literally more than fair, since developers are asking less than Steam's already generous suggested regional prices. If you consider yourself a fighting game enthusiast, this is exceptionally easy to recommend purely out of novelty. Especially so if you do have friends that you regularly play fighting games with.

For the rest, it's still worth checking out, but if you're less intrigued by a novel take on fighting games, you might have to also consider if this game appeals to in terms of content and presentation. Outside of 1v1 combat, there is a "PAUL ZONE" survival mode and arcade mode with a bit of character banter, but not much else. The presentation also reflects the rather budget nature of the art style, though the biggest issue for me was the art style more than anything. Big Billy is a somewhat amusing design, and I dig Marv's fighting style being based around the dryad/nature spirit that's haunting him, but there's little to latch onto with the rest of the game.

Many stages are simple photos that don't evoke much of anything, instead being bland representations of the stages you might see in other fighting games. Like a forest, field, or a street. When it comes to character designs, half the roster is simply "a guy," with nothing to make them visually interesting. Paul in particular is more of "just a guy" than even Guy from Final Fight, even though Guy's initial design was about as simple as his name, or the name of the game he debuted in. Mega Knockdown's mechanic have a strong sense of identity, but they are paired with a distinct lack of a visual identity, which is probably the game's greatest weakness, especially in a genre that is so reliant on designs that are catchy enough to instantly get you interested.

As long as that's not a deal-breaker, or you even enjoy what the game has going on in terms of presentation, then it's a very easy recommendation to make. Because outside of the small blemishes, Mega Knockdown has been a game that showed nothing but consistent growth and improvement throughout the years, and the passion that started it all is still clearly there.