Hyper Jam (Switch) Review

When the Switch launched I didn’t know how I’d done couch multiplayer before it. The ease of throwing it in a dock, popping out some joy-cons and handing one to a friend made things a breeze – no other console came with two controllers built-in. I’m happy to say that there’s been a steady flow of great multiplayer titles and Australian developed Hyper Jam is a new part of that stable. It’s got a killer 80s synthwave cyberpunk aesthetic – including katanas – and it’s a ball of good times.

Hyper Jam is straightforward, no-nonsense arena combat fun. Four players get thrown into one of several stages with their own unique quirks and settle their differences, using their fists, katanas or whatever other weapons they can nab as they appear through the match. Move with the left stick, aim with the right. Tap a trigger to fire/punch/whatever, tap a button to parry and reflect a projectile, tap another button to dash. It’s easy to accuse of being simplistic, and it’s certainly nothing spectacularly innovative, but the pacing is absolutely on point. Everything is fast and lethal. Split-second decisions need to be made – will parrying this grenade launcher push it back in a good direction or hit a wall and kill me? Am I in a good spot to dash away or will I fall off?

Do I need to dash inwards and close some distance? Some weapons have a charge mechanic that can overload if you hold it too long and kill you – but can that deny another player points for scoring a kill? It’s also impossible to stay in one spot, with weapons breaking after their very limited ammo is exhausted, and dead players firing clearly marked area-of-effect lasers every fifteen seconds. It’s very, very firmly in the ‘easy to learn, hard to master’ camp that makes games like this so addictive – I never felt like a death was unearned or unavoidable (bar maybe a few cheap-feeling falling-off-the-arena deaths, but maybe I’m just clumsy). It requires tactical thinking, but at no cost to the relentless pace. If there’s one criticism, things can get intense enough with not quiiiite distinct enough character silhouettes that I did lose track semi-frequently, and this goes double for handheld, but I think that can be the case for most multiplayer titles so I’ll let Hyper Jam off the hook. Maybe.

The best bit though is that if nearly anything you read in that last paragraph made you say ‘I think this would be fun without that’, there’s an option (or “Mutator”, in the game’s parlance) for it. You can turn off the laser strikes. You can turn off falling deaths. You can even disable core mechanics like parrying, dashing, and weapons for that true Fox-only-Final-Destination aesthetic. Then you can turn some fun things on like unlimited ammo, instagib or slippery ground. It’s properly custom and I guarantee it will go OFF at parties when we’re allowed to have those again. And when I say properly custom, I mean you can even add Perks to boost damage or give players certain abilities like extra damage at low health, or health regeneration, or any of the 11 others in the list all at one of 5 levels – my favourite game mode, Loadout, has each player pick 5 perks before the match begins – whether you level one perk or pick several is your choice. Yes, there are also game modes, three others besides the standard deathmatch Brawl and a Custom option. The rules are editable for all of them. Just do it docked (RIP Switch Lite owners) because the text is absolutely, ludicrously, incomprehensibly tiny when handheld.

Everything surrounding the game itself is seamless. You can play singleplayer with bots of selected difficulty (maybe tuned a little easy overall, if I had to level a criticism), locally, local wireless-ly, and online, all with 1 to 3 other players. Essentially it’s the same game and it’ll let you play with whatever number of people in whatever location they all happen to be in, which is quite frankly how it should be. Is it weird that the Local Wireless option is under Online? Maybe, but like, whatever. Gameplay appears to be pretty stable online as well, no criticisms there. There’s matchmaking or you can set up a custom match. It’s so competent it’s almost boring to talk about.

Ultimately, games like this live or die by their longevity and Hyper Jam presents a very solid front. While the mutators and options alone give you numerous ways to play, the developers are clearly active and invested in the game’s future as well. Hyper Jam first launched on PC just over a year ago and a lot of the updates have made their way through into the Switch’s initial release. A quick visit to the official Discord – advertised on the main splash screen, no less – reveals that Switch will receive updates to enable full cross-platform multiplayer, plus add even more mutators and additional game modes. Big points there.

So, like, well done Hyper Jam. It’s mirror polished, competent and great fun. It’s maybe not quite complex enough to devote your life to mastering but I think it nails the best quality a game like this can have – I pulled my non-gamer housemates out for a few rounds and they were able to pick it up and even start beating me within fifteen minutes, so I spent an hour practicing on bots afterwards to make sure it wouldn’t happen again. That’s how you know you’ve got some good multiplayer on your hands.

Rating: 4.5/5