Blade Blitz

Some minor quibbles don't stop Blade Blitz from being a great party game that can, at times, rise above even its lofty inspirations. At its core, Blade Blitz is the answer to "what if Nidhogg had more players" and honestly, the answer is a pretty darn good time. BB retains the tug of war style gameplay of its inspiration. Your adorable, anthropomorphic character of choice has a blade that it will eternally hold straight in front of them. You can spin clockwise, counter-clockwise, or choose a risky throw to try to hit the opposing team. One hit is one kill. Manage to kill the enemy team and you take the offense. The game starts on a single top-down screen but once a team takes offense, they must run to the gate on the opposing team's side. The opposing team is now on defense and must try to kill the offense team in order to take offense for themselves. A team scores when they make it to the opposing side's goal. Death is quick and thus, the struggle to earn back ground from the opposing team is tense and constantly changing. There is a high skill ceiling for making accurate throws and being able to spin in time to hit opponents but BB is easy to pick up and play for anyone. My kindergartner is able to play alongside my wife and I just fine. One element of BB I love is that after each point, the losing team gets access to a special power up or a debuff for the winning team. It's a brilliant bit of rubber-banding that doesn't feel punishing, even when it kind of is. Instead, these powers or debuffs are balanced more like forced changes in strategy vs simply making you worse. A power might make your blade explode upon throwing it or it may turn your sword into a boomerang. Both will screw you up if you aren't accounting for it but if you adjust, they could be as much a boon as anything. I do have some quibbles too though. Playing with uneven teams seems to cause the power up system to have issues, unless I've fundamentally misunderstood its purpose. When playing 2v1, the team of 2 scored and it allowed one of those 2 to pick a powerup which applied to the other player on the team of 2. I don't believe that's the idea? There are also settings for slowing down the game when the offense changes sides but they all feel a bit off to me. I wish it was just a bit faster on the default setting. Finally, and this is a small one but it's strange to me, the game is clearly designed for controllers but the character select screen feels almost like it was designed for Wii remotes? Instead of just moving through the options, each player gets a cursor that moves around the screen? It's just kind of out of place since it seems so clearly controller-focused. Overall, Blade Blitz is a great game to pull out at parties and is a quick pick-up-and-play game for all ages. Also, it isn't verified but it works perfectly on the Steam Deck. In fact, a Steam Deck docked to a TV may be an ideal way to play if you don't have your gaming PC in your living room already.