Pit People Review

From the creators of Castle Crashers, The Behemoth, comes something completely different in the form of Pit People. Currently in Early Access on Xbox One, Playstation 4 and Steam, Pit People is an adventure, tactical RPG with all the wit and character The Behemoth has become synonymous with.

Taking control of the farmer, Horatio, you travel the world in a wagon looking for trouble and damsels/cupcake to save. The battle system is pretty simple; you move your characters around a board, but there are no menus to choose attacks or spells. When your man, woman, cupcake or floatin wraith baby comes into range of their target they’ll automatically hit. Simple enough for newbies to get to grips with, while the strategic nature of placement will give old timers something to sink their teeth into. While battling you gain experience and can level during battles. These level ups can be life savers half way through a battle, bloodied and surrounded by enemies, then suddenly you level, get all your health back and go on to beat the crap out of the enemy and win! Not a strategy to rely on, but a very welcome addition.

At the beginning you’ll have a small crew of four, one of these being Sofia, the Spanish pirate Recruitador with a special ability. If you have any cages Sofia can capture enemies, the only requirement being they’re the last man(women/cupcake ect) standing. Once captured, the battle over, loot gained, you take it back to The City, which acts as the hub town. Here you can equip your new weapons, armour and change the line up of your group.

The city is also where you can fight at the pit for money, change to insane difficulty, choose what mission you’ll be taking or connecting to co-op. After the tutorial stage you get full reign of the hub city and can set up some co-op play. Either by connecting to a stranger's game or asking a friend to join yours, you can go out with another human being and fight the forces of evil. The game scales it by sending more enemies at you in each encounter, but it does keep the difficulty at a stable rate. If you can get a friend to join you it’s a very fun, mostly hilarious romp around the world.

Which brings us to Pit People’s main strength; it’s pretty darn hi-larious. The Behemoth has become known for the humour it puts into its games and Pit People is no different. Brilliantly narrated by Will Stamper, the game gives you humorous voice overs of what might be a not too kind God figure trying to kill Horatio, trying to force the hero’s hand into giving away all of his blue berries. Combined with the lovable characters, witty giraffe loading screens, bizarre equipment and colourful enemies it is impossible not to smile while playing Pit People.

The biggest downside to Pit People is it doesn’t last long. Only taking a few hours to play through it will definitely leave you wanting more. Though if it were to be longer they’d need to add a little something to make the battle system a little bit more engaging. It’s not too bad after a few hours but if they were to add to the length I can see it getting pretty boring after a while.