Gorilla Showdown: Rhythm Meets Carnage

Imagine just for a moment an arena shooter where you dodge bullets from heavily armed monkeys. Now, on top of that, imagine trying to hold a musical rhythm. It shouldn’t work, right? But in Sloth King’s just released Gorilla Showdown, it absolutely does. It easily could have been a gimmick, but ends up being a very cool frantic party game.

King of the Dance Floor

If you’ve played any King of the Hill mode than you’ll feel right at home here. Except the hill is a literal dance floor. We loved the commands and how we had to park ourselves on the center pad and, then, groove to the rhythm to rack up points. Juggling crowd control while actually staying on beat is a nightmare, but we mean that in the best way possible. You should know that, while you’re doing your thing, the rest of the 12-player lobby is actively trying to blast you off the stage.

Old School Vibes

The dance pad also regularly spits out power-ups. We’re talking lasers and homing missiles, just to name a few. There are even time-bending buffs just to keep you on your toes. Aside from the main mode, there’s a matchmaking rotation for standard FFA and Team fights. We had fun pushing the objective in Payload, then surviving a zombie-ape outbreak in Infected. Finally, we decided to end it on a high note and jumped into goofier modes like Ape Arsenal and Banana Grab. It’s fun doing this while shouting at your friends via the built-in proximity voice chat. Again, it shouldn’t work, and yet it does!

Custom Tracks, Total Chaos

Sloth King opted for a chunky and bright 3D cartoon art style. It looks great and fits the theme perfectly. The style is also great for helping you track the on-screen chaos. It was fun rolling up our sleeves, pushing through hazard-filled maps. The devs designed interesting places, from neon space clubs and pirate coves to radioactive ghost towns.

The base game’s electronic tracks do the job. But, and this is a big but, there is a full Steam Workshop support for custom music. You can import whatever you want. So, once you’re done with the official soundtrack, how about you try defending the objective to early 2000s pop-punk or Norwegian black metal. We tried that and we have to say, the song completely changes the vibe.

Unhinged Mashup

Gorilla Showdown is loud, fast, and completely ridiculous. If your group of friends needs a new, relatively cheap multiplayer game that will have you screaming like there’s no tomorrow then, by all means put this on your radar.