Quick Review: Paw Paw Paw

What can you say about a group that tries to fight against the tyranny of trousers? It depants, really.

I mean... some of us have been working from
home for nearly two years. Some of us are
living the (normal) pants-less dream already.

For those who are still reading after this pun… Developed by Simpleton, published by GrabTheGames and released on November 13th, 2020, Paw Paw Paw is the story of the eponymous village, a once prosperous – and pantsless – kingdom ruled by a benevolent King, until said King came into contact with a shard from space. He decreed mandatory pants-wearing for his subjects, and an Antipants movement arose against the sudden change. Most were decimated, but a pocket of resistance remains. Your pantsless animal hero is the latest promising recruit. Do them proud! As proud as one can be bottomless.

Man, I really had to type this all down, huh?

Hack, slash, and kill the bottom-wearers!

In this beat’em-up game, you have a wide variety of options in battle. The original controls are the arrows to move, D for a weapon attack, S for a fist attack, A to use the shield, Q and E to use special moves (which require the energy from a meter to be used), Space to jump, F to use an item, and Z and C to swap between items. The game has a level-up system with skill points, allowing you to improve your character by increasing the character’s stats, inventory size, or giving them new combo attacks.

I'mma take more inventory space, please.
I can carry barely anything!
Well, y'know... no pockets and all that...

Your nondescript friend is here to help!

You choose your character among builds with various stats, inspired by RPG classes (warrior, archer, etc.), and unlock new characters as the story progresses. You can equip new weapons found on the legions of soldiers you kill, you can buy items at the shop, and you can even get yourself a follower that will fight by your side, though its stats won’t be great. Multiplayer is also possible, with couch co-op with up to 4 players or a VS mode to fight against other players. A Survival mode is available from the menu as well.

They're 100% honest about this. The protagonist,
however, instantly assumes a ploy by enemies...
so he slaughters them all.
This war on pants is getting out of hand.

The story doesn’t take itself too seriously, applying lots of self-aware humor to the situation (like the player character assuming the folks in the way are villains even though they sometimes aren’t, and in fact have a good reason to be blocking the path). However, the gameplay is solid and complex, there’s a large variety of playstyles and the skill trees mean that you can experiment with how you improve your character. The game looks pretty great as well, the visuals are excellent. Some levels also shake up the basic formula by having peculiar goals, like pushing a load of bombs into an enemy camp, or snowboarding down the side of the mountain.

I didn't record my playthrough that far, but
some bosses way further down the line
are borderline unfair.

Now leveling up can be a bit of a grind, and some battles – especially against bosses – pit you against so many enemies at once that actually finishing the battle can be very difficult, so there may be a little bit of a balancing issue in places. Some later bosses attack multiple times in a row, and your character, without mercy invincibility, will get hit without a chance to recover, especially if they’re knocked down; then you’re pretty much doomed. You'd think they would have thought about that during development. But overall, putting those issues aside, it’s still a fairly enjoyable ride, and I imagine it’s even better with friends.

Paw Paw Paw is available on Steam for 9.99$.