STARWHAL

I've organised enough Saturday-night couch sessions to know immediately when something is going to cause a room full of people to lose their minds, and STARWHAL had that effect the first time I booted it up with controllers in hand. The premise is delightfully absurd: you and up to three other players each pilot a neon narwhal through retro 80s-styled space arenas, and your only job is to pierce the giant, beating heart on your opponent's chest with your tusk. Simple on paper. Absolutely chaotic in practice. The controls are the whole show here. You thrust forward with a button and steer with the analogue stick, but your narwhal handles like a majestic sea creature that has had far too much to drink, flopping and spinning with a momentum-heavy physics system that resists direct control at every turn. That slipperiness is intentional and it is genuinely funny, especially on a shared screen where everybody is equally hopeless at first. The skill gap does close with practice, which can actually work against the game in a friend group where one person puts in solo time and starts dominating every round. The four versus modes, Classic (last narwhal standing), Score Attack (points in a time limit), Zones (king-of-the-hill bubble control), and Heart Throb (a reverse-tag mode where holding the exposed heart scores points), give you enough variety to keep a session moving. Classic holds up best across all group sizes. Zones is genuinely tense with four players. Heart Throb, by contrast, is the weakest link: the physics make it too easy for the leader to coast, and balance falls apart fast. The single-player Challenge mode, split into Obstacle courses and Target-breaking time trials with bronze-to-platinum ratings, is useful for learning the controls and scratching an achievement itch, but it is not why you are here. Solo sessions against AI opponents exist and are functional, but the AI never replicates the chaos of four humans screaming on a couch. If you are buying this primarily as a solo experience, look elsewhere. There is also no online multiplayer at all, a limitation that critics and players have flagged consistently since launch. In 2024, that stings harder than it did in 2014: if your friends are not physically in the room, the game goes dormant in your library. On the presentation side, the neon-drenched retro aesthetic holds up surprisingly well. Over 90 costume options (yes, including a narwhal wrapped in a burrito), 25 arenas with stage-specific hazards like air currents and moving platforms, and an energetic electro soundtrack all contribute to the party atmosphere. The arenas themselves are one of the game's quiet strengths: different layouts genuinely change how a match plays out, and stages with environmental effects keep even veteran sessions feeling unpredictable. The accessibility bar is about as low as it gets for a competitive game, which is exactly the right call for something designed to pull non-gamers off the sofa and into a round without a tutorial. For four drunk friends on a Friday night, STARWHAL is close to ideal. Rounds are short, the scoring is transparent, and the fumblecore nature of the controls means no one ever feels hopelessly outclassed for long. For solo players, or anyone hoping to take it online with remote friends, the honest answer is that this game will sit idle most of the time. Match the use case to the purchase and you will not be disappointed.

Riley · Scout Team

Sports & racing

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