Claymation Studios return with their signature made-with-clay art style, but this time they are taking on the 2D arena brawler genre. Knuckle Creek is a budget title that can be played with up to 8 players (bots can fill in however many slots you want) both locally and online using room codes. It isn’t just the excellent artwork that sets Knuckle Creek apart. It’s the customisation options and the way it uses weapon throwing as its central mechanic that makes it feel unique.
Knuckle Creek is the environmental theme. There are over 30 arenas made up of buildings, landscapes, and even vehicles, where the chaos unfolds. Some offer little verticality or room to move, and those end up focusing on close-quarters combat. Every character has the exact same move set, so timing and creating enough space to not get pummeled is key when it’s fisticuffs time. Everyone can run, jump, punch, kick, and pick up weapons or throw objects. Characters have hit points, and each melee hit removes one point. However, a lot of area-of-effect weapons like bombs or missiles can wipe 2 points of health away from players, making them quite potent. Weapons are strewn around every level, and weapon crates constantly fall from the sky.
Weapons are Knuckle Creek’s stealthy advantage because each weapon has its own parameters for use. Throwing a sheep has a very different throwing arc and glide path compared to throwing a pig. Yes, these are things you can do. Maybe you’ll lob a bomb in the sawmill level that’ll blast a character into the path of the saw, where you’ll flip the level-specific sawmill switch and claim 3 points of health. Mwhaha. Of course, everyone else is running around picking up weapons, too. As aiming, charging, and firing or throwing the weapon takes time, that’s where melee combat comes into play. With the player open and exposed, a quick punch combo will hurt the player and drop their weapon. Yoink it, and you’ll now need to get to safety and use it yourself. Ring-outs also cause health damage, but you can turn on permadeath in the options this way. One level takes place on top of a harvester with an extendable funnel. One wrong blast and half the players are gone in a flash!
When a player is eliminated, there are options about how much they can interfere. By default, each player can spawn mines and bombs that fall from the sky. The eliminated player gets to choose where they spawn, and after a short cooldown, they can spawn another. What weapons can and can’t be used can be toggled. You can also set this option off entirely, as well as the total hit points up to 99.
Character customisation is fantastic in Knuckle Creek. By playing the single-player mission mode (a mixture of survival missions and AI-battles with increasingly larger hordes of opponents), you’ll unlock different characters. These include heads, upper and lower clothes alongside body suits, feet, and voice banks. Most come in many colour swatches or patterns. Once unlocked, you can mix and match all the different character parts to create your own weird hybrid. Custom characters are saveable, although there are only a few slots. The character roster is impressively large, meaning you really can create a very strange claymation character of your own if you want to stand out from the crowd. The single-player mission mode is a great introduction to the game, with varied setups and goals. Who knew defending yourself from a flock of angry seagulls could be so fun?!
Whilst I’ve had very limited time playing with local or online multiplayer, setting up a private lobby for your friends to join is simple and quick. The first post-release update will add public lobbies for random battles. That is honestly my only minor quibble. The AI sometimes feel a bit overzealous and causes itself harm sometimes, or runs in circles on occasion, but usually, the AI plays well. Mixing players and AI also works well, and team modes allow you to play humans vs AI or scatter everyone around. There are also variants that players can choose between rounds to switch up what weapons drop or how explosion and gravity work. Add on top a soundtrack that sounds like a Hillbilly version of Rosie and Jim on crack, and you’ve got a unique, incredibly fun to play title.
I love that Knuckle Creek feels like a title that will live on for years to come in my local multiplayer game nights. It has that quintessential one-more-go quality, and its chaos is controlled chaos. As everyone has the same movesets, everyone has the same skill ceiling and potential. That also makes Knuckle Creek easy to pick up and play and tricky to master. Ah, the perfect sweet spot for multiplayer carnage. Sign me and everyone else up. Buy it now!
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