Punch Club
Nintendo Switch

Reviewed by Brett

Publisher – tinyBuild Games
Developer – Lazy Bear Games
Music – DaVince, Pitanime
Category – Simulation, Fighting, Strategy, Role-Playing
Release Date – May 24, 2018

The First rule of Punch Club… Talk about Punch Club

At least everyone should be.

Punch Club is a great many things.

All of which are amazing.

A little turn based fighting, a little rpg progression and story, a fistful of strategy all wrapped up in a simulation/management game.

wow.

Punch Club started its journey on PC and Mobile and later on 3DS and other consoles last year and has now graced everyone’s favorite hybrid.

After a brief intro its time to start training. You’ll be doing quite alot of it.

Your primary focus is to train up to be a top tier MMA style fighter. Training in the case of Punch Club includes all aspects of your characters life. From sleeping and eating to kicking ass and also taking names. It may sound like and action packed game but in practice it all comes down to not much more than pressing a button to start and stop whatever activity your preforming. This applies to literally everything you need to do in game. You’ll need to manage a series of meters for sleep,hunger, happiness, health by making sure you get rest, eating and enjoying the small things in life like watching some t.v., all done by hitting A. Also all training and fighting you do is all done by hitting one button. It’s somewhat simple but its presented in such a great way that it never feels like your not doing much, in fact there are so many thing to keep track of you constantly feel busy.

Punch Club is also littered with references to all sorts of things you probably love, from ninja turtles to my personal favorite, an appearance by Jay and Silent Bob. If you don’t know who that is, shame on you.

On your way to being an awesome fighter you also need to get pretty good at life. Your going to have to work, train and take care of yourself at all times to be the best. Like all things in Punch Club working consists of picking a job to do and pressing a button to start and stop the activity all while watching your gauges, because everything that you do uses up some or all of your stat bars. You need to earn money to enter fights and train at the gym/ buy gym equipment. Your also going to need a ton of cash for food because your a growing boy and you sure can burn through some calories.

Your going to be working on three stats for your characters skills. Strength, agility and stamina. The game tells you to focus on one so you can shine in a specific area and this is advice i wouldn’t stray from as its fairly taxing to try and work on all three at the same time. Each skill is worked on by using specific gym equipment. You can see what skills your gaining as you get them so its a really easy, smooth process. Just watch those stat bars. All this training leads to fights in the ring. The more fights you win the more things you unlock in the skill tree. The more things you unlock in the skill tree the more fights you will win. All while working your way trough a fun little story.

It’s all a big cycle in Punch Club, Train to get stronger, burn through resources, work to get money for more resources, fight your way up the ladder, repeat, repeat, repeat.

Verdict

Though Punch Club may be simplistic at its core, everything it does works so well and is presented so brilliantly that you never even care that your basically only pressing one button the whole game. Featuring a fairly large and detailed progression system, beautiful top notch pixel art, a fantastic chip-tune soundtrack by DaVince and Pitanime and more nostalgic references than you can shake a stick at, Punch Club delivers on a good time and just because its basically a management simulator does not mean it is not full of fun and action. A more casual game for sure but one that should not be missed.