Gorgeous cooperative game. Long sought Beat 'Em Up Side View. But I did not expect this ... It is even more fun that this is a two-dimensional game.

I really liked the online game, there is a lot to do here. But a team made up of friends makes even more sense. It's fine!
I will recommend this game to everyone! I practically did not see any bugs or anything that could spoil my impression of the game.

Special thanks for the roles in the game, it adds interest to the game.

It's also cool that there are several types of weapons. It can be seen that the developers have tried very hard. Low bow and thank you very much!

Disclaimer: A copy of this game was provided by the publisher.

Paw Paw Paw is a beat em up about the Antipants revolution inspired by Castle Crashers.

Most of the combat revolves around staggering, both the player and the enemies can repetitively attack to keep their enemy from taking action. Early in the game, the enemies take a lot of hits until the damage is upgraded. Surprisingly destroying chests/trees and other destructibles that drop items take too many hits. Some later enemies and bosses can't be staggered which makes them challenging.

Attacking was made responsive in update v1.1. The attacks can be animation cancelled with a dodge or by using your active skills, which grants a short period of invulnerability, but gaining energy by attacking is slow to consider this a move to rely on. Sometimes spamming dodge around the level will alleviate pressure and open up new chances for attack.

There are 30 levels in story mode with different level objectives and several bosses. Experience gained was improved in update v1.1, Getting experience to level up the characters is the only way to unlock access to higher tier weapons, upgrading your active skills and gain additional stats.

A total of 4 starting and 4 unlockable characters are available where the best one is the starting archer due to his stun/freeze active skill and extra energy generation per attack. Some weapons can be bought at the outposts between levels while others drop randomly from enemies or in chests. Companions can be hired and mounts bought, but the best thing to spend your food resource at outposts is healing and energy potions.

The game is easier in multiplayer that only has local co-op supported. When playing single player the focus is on staying alive before attacking, making the ranged characters the best for that job. There is difficulty scaling by increasing the enemy stats and reducing the experience gained when played with 3 or 4 players. You can revive the other dead players after a few seconds with half your health gone while dying in single player means a level restart.

With the update v1.1 the major complaints were fixed and this is a fun Castle Crashers inspired game if you are itching for more side scrolling beat em up action.

For achievement hunters:
The achievements are for completing the game, beating the 2 hidden bosses, starting co-op with 4 players (Universal Control Remapper helps) and various grinds. The levels can be replayed.

I meanwhile can see that I’m kind of repeating myself in my reviews, but upfront, this is actually again rather another neutral review that tipped my personal scales into this direction in the end, not a downright negative one. To be fair, I really would like to explain this, but oh boy, where should I start, mixed emotions all over the place.

I mean, the basic premise, a coop 2D brawler for up to 4 players with quite a few characters, all with their own different skill set that you can evolve, sounds kind of cool, doesn’t it? There are good examples where this concept can be a lot of fun, like the famous Castle Crashers, or a little more unknown gems like the hilarious Zombie Vikings, or even such addictive pixel ones like Fist Puncher. But in this case, even if I think about it hard and a long time, I’m still unsure what exactly went wrong here with this game. Graphics are kind of cute, music serves the cause (some nice retro-electro tunes, but they get repeated too much). So where do the negative feelings come from?

Maybe it’s the extremely slow progression all in all. Yes, you can choose 8 different characters, but the levelling is so tiresome and slow that you should better stick to one character. A shame, that way you’ll never see those other ones in action, so you could ask yourself, what are they for anyway? But even if you specialize, you NEED to level up, and big time, especially to carry more items and better weapons, which means, at some point you’ll be grinding some bosses like crazy for the little bit of experience you at least get there. And consecutively, as another negative experience, especially during those grinding and repeating sessions it often get’s obvious how few levels there actually are in the game.

Or maybe it’s the partially unfair gameplay. Hitboxes seem kind of off, you often think you’re hitting someone, but you don’t, because you’re standing slightly above, especially weird for distance-based weapons like the bow. And even if you do, some enemies just retaliate against all odds, or guard, or hit you with ice or stun or whatever. Especially unfair in this regard is the boss fight. It’s hell doing it in single player (4 phases!), and even in coop, the only character that really has a chance is a bow-wielder. And even this way we went through all our large health items we got. I mean, only 4 percent of all players finished the game, so that kind of speaks for itself.

But what really tipped my personal rating scales into the negative were the achievements. Just for your interest, Playstation and XBox feature over 10 achievements less, and guess what, those extra achievements for Steam are all super grindy and annoying. Like, get 100K food on 1(!) player (terrible grind), get 20 legendary weapons (also an awful grind), mount or hire tenfold of the Playstation numbers, but the worst ones, level up completely and spend 500K food. Seriously??!! This actually is pure player disgust in my opinion, I don’t know. In hindsight I’m actually wondering if the devs just hate Steam thus ’granting’ us those extra achievements or if they just made a mistake. Anyway, sorry for my rant, but this actually made me kind of furious, so it had to get out.

To sum it all up, in between now and then me and my wife had some good coop hours, but most of the time we were pretty annoyed. There are just so few quality-of-life-features in the game, and there was just so much game-trolling by the mechanics that I seriously can’t give a thumbs up on grounds of conscience.

My Playtime: 11.2h (100% achievement, finished the game)
Grindy Achievement(s): Yes (~8 achievements).
Optional Achievement(s): Yes (~20 achievements).
Difficult Achievement(s): No.

Paw Paw Paw is a side scroller beat 'em up that supports up to 4 players locally. It doesn't have an online co-op, but it does have remote play for online capabilities. It has 3 modes in total with 30 levels in the story mode.

Pros:
- A lot of characters to choose from with different skills and stats
- Unique boss fights
- 4 difficulty modes that can be changed anytime

Cons:
- Can be grindy, especially when played solo
- You can get stunlocked until you die
- Exp and money aren't shared between characters

Specs
Intel Core i5-9300H 2.40GHz, 8GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650

Yes.
The game is cheap enough on a sale, so buy it if you are looking for local co-op games and don't care about achievements.

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The game looks cute. It reminds me of flash games with their simplistic visuals, but with more refined backgrounds due to the fog and lighting effects. The UI also looks compact and easy to understand while not showing a lot of text.

The story is only there to advance the story. You'll get the gist of it just from reading Steam's description page: a king decided to force all animals to wear pants and some people are opposing that. The story might be exaggerated sometimes, but it works for a silly game like this.

Gameplay
The game has 3 modes that are selectable from the main menu.

• Story mode will be what you'll be playing most of the time, offering 30 levels in a selectable difficulty.
  
• VS mode is a 1v1v1v1 mode where you have to beat other people locally.
  
• Survival mode is exactly like how it sounds; you need to survive as long as possible from hordes of enemies in an area.

Despite having 3 modes, the last 2 seem to be an afterthought. They look too simple and direct compared to the well-polished story mode with cutscenes and minigames in some of the levels. Heck, I'd rather have some of the minigames as the survival mode instead.

4 characters are selectable from the beginning. Each character can only be played by one player, so all characters will be used in 4 player co-op. More characters will be unlocked as you play, but since most of them won't appear until later in the game, it can be hard to justify switching to another character because your level and money won't be transferred on the switch.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2484562278

In the story mode, the objective is simple: you need to beat all enemies on the way and reach the exit. Just like other beat 'em up games, you can't just run straight to the exit and ignore the enemies - you need to wipe all enemies on the screen before you can proceed, usually indicated by the "Go" arrow on the top-right. However, this "Go" arrow tends to appear late; there are times when I had to wait for a few seconds after I wiped out the enemies. Sometimes I think the game was bugged because of it.

Combat
Paw Paw Paw seems to be more optimized for co-op runs. Enemies tend to come from both sides, and it can be easier to clear the area if you stationed character on each side. However, since I played it solo, this cost me a lot. I had to grind some of the earlier levels to farm potions or hire a companion to act as a meatshield.

Despite having the option to hire an AI companion, they don't seem to be that helpful; they keep on taking unnecessary damage from traps and are unable to deal high damage to beat enemies. Having to share potions with them seems not to be a wise choice as a result - I even think it's better to finish the latter levels solo.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2508419299

That being said, the difficulty tends to be skewed. Some of the earlier levels have traps that killed me more than I could count, while some of the later levels give me a lot of free allies to beat it easily. Moreover, since your damage depends on your weapon and level, it can be hard to finish the first few levels if you don't have a good weapon. The solution? Grind until you get a better weapon.

Enemies can stunlock you until death. Although some enemies only do one or two attacks consecutively, others will do more, sometimes with higher damage to kill you before you can recover. You technically can do the same thing with your attacks, though. Spamming the attack button will stagger the enemies, which you can use repeatedly until they die. The combo system that the game has in the skill tree seems to be useless as a result, especially since you have to remember the overly complicated sequence and execute it correctly.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2317843408

Bosses
There are a lot of boss fights, each with a different attack pattern and window to attack. However, I found them to be squishy - I could finish most of them in a few special attacks. It might also be because of the character that I used and the difficulty that I chose, but I found the secret bosses in the earlier levels to be more difficult than some bosses that I met later on.

Length and Difficulty
I finished the game in 8.3h. The rest of my playtime was spent on obtaining the rest of the grindy achievements. I played the game mostly on easy difficulty; I switched it from normal after I realized that I kept on dying in the levels with traps. The game can be grindy, especially on solo, but I could see how enjoyable it is if it's played with more people.

Issues
The game seems to treat that I was playing as Kamu, the brown bear, in the cutscenes even though I didn't use it. The fact that I used the same character as one of the officials also confuses me in the dialogues, especially since I and the NPC used the same name and image. Lastly, the final boss fight seems to be bugged. I could see the boss doing more than one attack at once if I keep on attacking once and rolled to the other side to dodge their attack right after.

Paw Paw Paw might be playable solo, but its strength comes from played with more people. The hordes of enemies that come from both sides can be eliminated easily with some planning, and you won't get stunlocked too much with that. That being said, it still offers some enjoyment if you don't mind the grind, which is mandatory whether to progress the game or to obtain 100% achievements. Achievement hunters might need to be wary of playing it though - it's a long grind, especially if you don't play it with achievements in mind.

Quite a good game as it provides interesting combat techniques. Many characters and weapons. I really liked playing with friends, so that's also a plus. Overall, worth buying and spending a few hours in it

I had fun playing this game, but not because the game is good, but because I enjoyed the company of my friends and siblings. Honestly, the game has many issues in my opinion:
* Extremely grindy for a local co-op pve game. You'll need to stick to one character and grind multiple times through the missions to be able to level it up and experience it to its fullest.
* The noticeable difference between the balance of the characters. I was lucky I picked up a ranged character in the beginning, and it is obvious that it is much easier to play such type rather than melee ones especially in boss fights.
* The weird hitboxes and the inability to attack up and down. In this game, you can only attack right and left, and you need to be exactly on the same line and height as the enemy to be able to hit it. This is one of the most frustrating things I had to deal with in this game.
A side positive note to the cute graphics, the funny story, and the upbeat (a bit repetitive) music,. All in all, I don't recommend this game. 5/10.

Animations are sloppy and controls are loose, music is super weirdly out of place. Most of the game is played grinding against meh characters waiting to get enough upgrades to finally make the game progress at a bearable speed. That said, this game is obviously made to play with friends and not solo.

reminds my of crappy flash games you would find on kongregate or newgrounds years ago. meh gameplay and bad character models traded in for a semi-cute aesthetic.

What is balancing? Baby don't hurt me.

Sure I can fight one of the later bosses that looking at steam achievements less than 7% of the players have beaten, with one of the first weapons I received in the game, since all later ones weren't better. Sure I can kill the many enemies surrounding the boss so the fight is fair in numbers. Sure I can dodge all attacks until 75% of the bosses HP are down, to then be staggered by him and lose my remaining 80% of HP in one continuing attack. And sure I am ready to not start from a checkpoint but instead the start of the level with its 40-50 enemies that I can learn to attack smartly, or also just smash into repeatedly with my early-game weapon. By the way the next level after that is most likely not going to be a challenge at all for some reason. Well maybe, it may also kill me like 10x before I beat it, cant tell for sure. First have to get beyond that boss.

So:
The art in this game, especially in the "cutscenes" is drawn quite well and creates a nice atmosphere. The rest of the games artstyle is also pretty fitting. The idea of weapon drops is good and it always feel nice to see another one (of the class youre currently playing) to drop. Its interesting to find hidden bosses and fight them since they are a bit more difficult. The world map with its outposts that you can navigate to, to do various things like buying items etc. gives a cool sense of visual progression. The ability to dodgeroll is always a nice to have in a game with fighting mechanics. The game has a continuous flow when it comes to look and feel and moving around the characters doesnt feel too bad either. But. Heres the rewind to the start of this review: Everything related to game balancing has been completely ignored. Forest 1 was the first major difficulty spike in the game. The first real level, that contained to many enemies at once. You spend enough time to learn fighting simple types of enemies in this game, a knowledge that you then just use to swipe the next levels until new mechanics or enemies get introduced. You level up and collect weapons, you spend your skill points to improve your character and find out that the weapon you are currently using is still the best one. Then you continue playing, finding more weapons, like bows or axes and maybe find another outpost where someone is selling you weapons. Sorry buddy but the weapon I recently found is better than all of then ones you offer for my class. By the way my class is the one I am sticking to for the rest of the game, since all others would start on level 1 if I switch to them and I would have to replay the early levels to get them on par. And I did try to start the game with the archer, noticed that he can do nothing against the enemies and switched to the botanist, that then would continuously stagger the enemies without letting them attack. And he deals far more damage by default. Crazy. Guess I dont need to ever play another character? Well I wanted to give it a try so I selected the barbarian, highest default damage stat, should be the meta then right? Now, hes too slow to stagger the enemies, well sorry, back to the botanist. Back to my trusty old weapon that I since then only changed once, and I assume to be close to the final boss of the story. Well some day, with enough weapon mastery levels, I may be able to switch to the legendary weapon I earned through fighting a difficult boss, but cant equip because my character isnt skilled enough for it... Well... yeah. To summarize my point again: This game feels like a giant troll-game, like one of those Mario Maker troll levels. Even though it probably doesnt intend to do that. Maybe it tries to be an honest game that you can improve at, but thats not what I am seeing here. I often feel betrayed or stabbed in the back by the games coding and balance choices, I dont get a reward from a boss, because a cutscene is triggered before I am allowed to pick it up, I get hit by an enemy which allows an enemy to hit me to deal enough damage to kill me before I can react. I attempt to dodge poisonous plants, trap-buttons and sawblades that are arranged on the ground in a game where it isnt that easy to judge where your current vertical position is. I continue to get weapons 2-3 areas later that are still worse than the weapon I am using (maybe I got super super lucky?) and lots of other moments where I sat in my chair and just watched my screen in disbelief as something happened that I didnt feel having the control over. And thats not to compare with other games that you simply 'dont play well'. This felt different.

Would I recommend playing this game? No. I had lots of negative emotions while trying to squeeze in a little fun here and there. But: The game is interesting enough and too much effort was put into it, so I would rather recommend players that feel unsure about their skills in such games, to watch a playthrough on YouTube or other video platforms instead. Additionally achievement hunters might want to dodge this game since the achievements that have the lowest % in this game are the ones that require you to collect or use something for more times than needed during your playthrough of this game, which means grinding til you get them. 500.000 food in bank? I dunno man.

Anyways far too long review. Rather watch it be played than playing it yourself. Its just too stressful with all the things that its throwing at you with all of its imbalances.

+ beat-em-up, fun short games
+ nice art style
- repetitive gameplay, music, weird balancing issues
- need more responsive fighting, gameplay loop
- not great as a single player experience

pick it up if it's a buck or you want a fun game for kids

I love and hate this game.
It doesn't play like I expected it to, which would be like Castle Crashers. Why? Because after playing that game, every hack-and-slash game gets compared to it. It was pure gold.

Anyway, Some characters are a complete joke until you level them up a bunch. Others are absolutely strong right from the start and only get better.

The way it handles a number of mechanics are so weird.
Healing is basically mostly just Health Potions. Food you pick up? Currency.
You're locked with some low-tier basic moves until you "unlock" moves where you do 2 more hits or get a different button mashing combo. But you can't mash them because the timing is dumb and requires a target to be hit.
A number of weapons you get are either Meh, Bleh or OMG. Most of them are Meh.

Boss fights are tough to deal with at first. And some fights just don't get any easier unless you start doing some nonsense tactics to beat them. Or you've gained so many talents and levels to compensate.

I would've liked to have some better moves and combos. Overall it was always enjoyable to try and beat what I failed at. The end boss fight is nonsense.