The year is 2007. My buddy and I are eagerly waiting for the release of Smash Bros Brawl. The game is all we can think and talk about. After years of playing Smash Bros N64, this will undoubtedly be most fun we'll ever experience with a video game. Our expectations are high, too high perhaps. Cue to a few months later and Brawl finally drops. We fire up the Wii and after playing for about 2 hours, we're left pleased, but unsatisfied for reasons we struggle to explain.
The next day, we meetup for another session of Brawl, but we first fire up the PS3 to check a few things. That is when we stumble upon a game called Rag Doll Kung Fu, a physics-based fighting game. I convince my friend to get it and we start playing. My eyes suddenly open wide. For the first time ever, I can actually feel the weight of my movements on screen. The momentum, the velocity, the mass of the characters and props are things that I can now feel to some extent. I fall in love with the genre and never play Brawl again. Coincidentally, it's also the last time I ever touch a physics-based fighting game, Rag Doll Kung Fu included.
15 years later, after playing nothing but casual FPS games, I decide to make an Itch.io account to see what this website has to offer. After browsing for a little while, I stumble upon Stick It To The Stick Man. I don't know what to expect, nor what to make of it, but for some reason, I feel compelled to give it a try. I launch it and then as soon as I'm dropped in the level, I'm ashamed to admit that my first thought in something along the lines of "so you just spam the SPACE key? wow. that's kinda lame and redundant".
But then..., it happens. A few punches and kicks later, I feel it. I feel my movements and my momentum. I feel like Neo in the burly brawl scene of Reloaded. It's all coming back to me. And for a lack of better words, I'm having a f*cking blast.
Welp, 23 hours of playtime later and I can confidently say that this is one of the most fun games I've ever played. It's the only game I own that I can fire up and play for 30 minutes to "scratch that itch", and it scratches said itch extremely efficiently.
So yeah. Long and drawn-out story aside, I wanted to express to the devs my gratitude for the existence of this game. It's provided me with a daily boost of serotonin for a little while now and I don't take that for granted. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't eager to see and play the next update, but as someone who has a foot in the game industry, I'm no stranger to the monstruous task that is developing and updating a quality game, regardless of the genre or scope. So with that in mind, I'm relieved to see that you guys are prioritizing quality over quantity, as opposed to simply falling for the community's pressure to put out more updates.
I thank you very kindly your hard work and I'm very much looking forward to see your next games and updates!