Coffence is a coffee-based fighting game. Yes, you read that correctly. A coffee based fighting game. Developed and published by Sweet Bandits Studios, Coffence is just a touch insane, but in a rather good way. In Coffence, your coffee cup is both your health bar as well as your weapon. Hit the enemy’s cup to make them spill their coffee and try to pick it up with your own before it touches the ground. The first one to lose all their coffee loses the match.
- Funny: The insanity is the hook that keeps you playing. Playing as a dog trying to reach the Mother Bean, a gigantic coffee bean from outer space, is pure insanity. The game doesn’t take itself serious at all and frequently jokes around. Which makes the story all the more enjoyable.
- Depth with coffee? There’s a surprising amount of depth. For such a silly game, it’s actually quite complicated. You got melee attacks, ranged attacks, blocks, block breakers, dashes, slides and even an ultimate move, coffee break, which sacrifices one of your own drops of coffee to gain a speed boost. On top of that, the entire ‘catch any dropped coffee to regain health’ mechanic, is actually really hard to master. I’m actually quite shit at it, to be honest…
Your chosen character also has their own strengths and even your coffee cup matters!
- Controls: The mouse and keyboard controls feel clunky. The already rough gameplay becomes even worse when you play it on mouse and keyboard. I’d say that even Dark Souls plays better on a keyboard, but that would be a lie. Coffence is a close second for the worst mouse/keyboard controls I’ve played though!
But, since the controls with a controller are a lot smoother, I only rank this ‘mixed’ rather than bad.
- Gameplay: The gameplay itself needs work. It’s awkward to aim a lot of the time and trying to reliably catch any spilt coffee often feels impossible. Or maybe I’m just shit at it, but I think it’s both. The AI often pulls of amazingly quick recoveries that just seem impossible to do with the aiming in its current state. If the gameplay would just feel smoother, I think this might make a great game to just mess around with on game night with a bunch of friends. But right now it needs a lot of polishing
CONCLUSION
Score: 50%
Coffence can go either way. It can become an amazingly fun game, or it can stay the rough and unpolished gem that it is right now. I hope that Sweet Bandits Studios can fix the issues this game has because I actually look forward to playing this with my friends when it’s in a better state!
Developer: Sweet Bandits Studios Publisher: Sweet Bandits Studios
Played on: PC / Steam
Time to beat: Beating the story mode with one character takes barely 10 minutes, depending on how well you play.
Perfect for: A couple of games with friends, good for a quick laugh.
Steam Game Store link: click here
