I love party games, so when I got a chance to play a hands-on preview for Bare Butt Boxing I jumped at the opportunity. It might look like a mashup of Gang Beasts and Fall Guys, but Bare Butt Boxing isn’t about grabbing and pulling, it’s about boxing and bare butts—obviously.
The premise of Bare Butt Boxing is simple: box in an arena filled with hazards and obstacles, and score points against your opponents. The one with the highest score wins the round. You play as slightly gelatinous alien who, along with their alien sparring partners, have become enamored with Earth boxing, so they’ve taken their bare butts to the source to box in various locales on (and around) Earth.
Developer Tuatara Games has only one other game under their belt, the side scrolling turret/tower defense game Let Them Come. They’ve also provided VFX work for some pretty big games, like Fortnite and Valorant. They’ve taken their expertise and made a colorful and wacky party game.
I had a chance to flaunt my bare butt and box with a few of the developers. The version of the game I played was bare bones (and bare butt—sorry!) but it’s already shaping up to be a chaotically fun physics-based boxing party game. While I played in only one game mode, in a single arena without any power-ups, I had a ton of fun getting knocked around mercilessly by the developers. I may even have won a match or two (but who’s keeping track?). It was emphasized to me that Bare Butt Boxing is about boxing, and not pulling or grabbing like in other party games, notably Gang Beasts and Fall Guys.
The plan is to release Bare Butt Boxing into Early Access to let the community help shape development later in 2022. I can’t wait to get my bare butt back into the arena for some more chaotic boxing matches.