Steam Greenlight Spotlight: Unfair Jousting Fair

Today’s Greenlight spotlight is on Unfair Jousting Fair, a 2-D jousting game where players attempt to balance on a unicycle whilst charging towards each other with improvised weaponry. Today’s Greenlight was quite barren, so I was a bit surprised to come across something that I found somewhat compelling.

Unfair Jousting Fair had me interested with its visual style, which I found to be compelling, although it isn’t the best art we’ve ever seen. I quite the character art in the game, which looks almost as if it was made with construction paper in some of the screenshots that I’ve looked at. Another draw of Unfair Jousting Fair is its soundtrack, which we get a preview of in the trailer. However, I’m often skeptical of soundtracks because we’ve seen many indie releases before with only one or two tracks, which means that the music gets very repetitive, very quickly. We can only hope that they are able to release a soundtrack with a good number of tracks. In a game like Unfair Jousting Fair, where most of the action taking place will already be sort of repetitive, it is important for the soundtrack to control the flow of the game, which means that there is a dire need for a good variety of music.

Unfair Jousting Fair seems like quite a simple game, mechanically. Both your character and your weapon are randomly selected automatically. This is good in a sense because many of the weapons are obviously imbalanced. Weapons such as the push broom and the boat paddle(oar) will have a clear advantage over shorter weapons such as what appears to be a closed umbrella and a golf club. The random nature of this means that players will have to learn to overcome the disadvantages that the weapons can possibly prevent. With that said, the game will apparently feature very difficult controls, which may mean that despite any disadvantages, the more skilled players will be able to come away with the victory each time. I feel like learning how to control your character and balance while keeping your weapon raised will be the key to being good at the game and defeating all of your opponents. This learning curve gives Unfair Jousting Fair a compelling feature and I’m looking forward to seeing what they do with their idea as they move through the development cycle.

All in all, Unfair Jousting Fair looks like a semi-compelling game that could soak up a bit of time with friends. Their Greenlight page fails to mention if the game is multiplayer, which if it is not will really defeat the entire purpose of the game. I see Unfair Jousting Fair as a game to play with your friends in local multiplayer where you can get violent with each other after a crushing loss. That is the way competitive games are meant to be played, especially when they feature a frustratingly difficult control scheme like Unfair Jousting Fair claims to. The appeal of the game doesn’t seem like it would last too long, however, so we’ll have to hope that the price is right for the amount of content that they are offering. I feel like for a game like Unfair Jousting Fair, with only one main gameplay mechanic, it is going to be very challenging to maintain an interested player community over a long period of time.  If you are interested in taking a look at Unfair Jousting Fair, you can check out their Greenlight page and consider leaving a vote or some constructive feedback.

What are some other titles on Greenlight that you guys and girls are looking forward to?