Coffence Preview

Sweet Bandits Studios are mental. Absolutely Hannibal Lecter “liver with fava beans and a nice Chianti” bonkers. They must be to come up with the pure silly genius that is Coffence.

The concept is simple enough, a combination of twin stick shooter style controls and beat em up where instead of health you have shots of coffee. So far so straightforward I’m sure you’ll agree, but at that point it goes bananas. 

Players get to choose between a pirate, a barista, a yuppie and a hipster. The protagonists then get a choice of coffee receptacles with which to beat each other senseless in a variety of locations ranging from pirate ships to offices to space.

Being an Early Access game that is still in development, the A.I of the single player mode is a little simplistic and the online mode is yet to come.

The tutorial is a bit on the buggy side and the controls take a lot of getting used to, what with the arm slinging the java about being controlled either with the mouse or right stick and movement being WASD, the D-pad, or the left stick on a controller.

It doesn’t take a lot of time to realise that the big hint in the name points to the stances of the fighters. Stick them in white suits and give them face guards and it’s … fencing. The last time I played a game with fencing in it was Sabre Wulf on the ZX Spectrum! Although the foils in Coffence are closer to yoyos than long delicate steel stabby things.

There’s only three lunatics developing this game, so I wouldn’t expect it to be some massively polished AAA level title as yet, it’s still Early Access and there’s not been an update since August 2017, but the promise shown so far is impressive to say the least. Given time, and enough feedback from players, this game could be a right little dazzler and I’m going to be watching for more content for Coffence looming over the horizon sometime soon.

If indie brawlers that you can play with a couple of drunken mates are your thing then Coffence is one to go get as soon as you can, it’s only £11 and you get more than that worth in puns alone! Go on, it’s less than a round of coffees at that place with the big green logo!