Bare Butt Boxing

I went in hoping for a party brawler with actual mechanical teeth. What I got was something that plays less like a fighting game and more like a physics experiment with a score counter bolted on. Bare Butt Boxing puts you in control of one of six wobbly alien fighters across eight maps, and the whole point is to punch opponents into glowing portals while avoiding the same fate yourself. That core loop is functional and occasionally funny, but it takes about ten minutes to fully map the ceiling of what this game asks of you. The moveset is the first problem. You get left punch, right punch, jump, dash, and a wind-up heavy. That is the entire toolkit. No hooks, no uppercuts, no stance-switching, nothing that rewards timing beyond the most basic read-and-swing rhythm. The four game modes - Score, a ball-into-portal mode that cribs from Rocket League's energy without the depth, a hot-gloves variant where only one player can score at a time, and a fourth called Cycle that barely differentiates itself from the base - do cycle through quickly enough to stave off monotony for one sitting. Stage hazards like gusting winds on the mountain map or vanishing platforms at the neon arcade add some chaos that the moveset alone cannot generate. Item pickups, including a vacuum that yanks opponents toward the portal and a super frenzy buff, inject brief moments of slapstick timing that land reasonably well. The online population is the real wall. With a thin Steam review count sitting at mixed ratings and no ranked infrastructure to speak of, finding a random lobby is a coin flip. Bots are available but they are genuinely poor opponents - so passive they barely constitute a threat, which makes solo sessions feel like sparring with furniture. The couch multiplayer case is stronger. Up to four players local, six online, and the physics engine delivers enough ragdoll nonsense that a group of friends with controllers will find a handful of rounds worth laughing at. But that window closes fast. Cosmetic grind is stingy - first-place finishes net twelve coins while most unlockable skins and gloves cost between 100 and 300, so progression feels like friction rather than reward. Tuatara Games are a VFX studio by trade, and it shows in the presentation. Load times are short, frame rate is stable, and the map art is genuinely colorful and varied. The sound design has personality. None of that compensates for content that feels like an Early Access skeleton that reached 1.0 without fully filling out. If you have a regular couch crew and want something brain-off for an hour, this lands slightly above a party game you'd find bundled in a sale pack. If you're hoping for rollback netcode, skill expression, or a live online scene to grow into, look elsewhere.

Fred · Scout Team

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