In the summer of 2020, something more contagious than coronavirus spread among my friend group. At the time, we had spent endless evenings playing classic party games on Nintendo Switch like Mario Kart, Super Smash Bros., and the Jackbox Party Packs. But after many nights of this, we were starting to get bored. I decided to search for more games to play when something caught my eye.
“Hmm, what’s this? Boomerang Fu?”
I watched a clip of multicolored food slice each other with, you guessed it, boomerangs.
“$15? Sure why not.”
During the next game night, I whipped out Boomerang Fu, unsure of what the reception would be. We played it. And then we played it again. And again. It quickly became our staple game. And then the uncontrollable spread began.
After being blessed by the Covid-19 vaccine in 2021, I visited a friend in New York and played a few matches with him. He couldn’t get enough and immediately downloaded the game for his friends to play. Another buddy of mine who experienced the game in San Francisco moved to Boston where he spread it to his friends out there.
I have never seen a single other game spread as quickly among my friends as Boomerang Fu. I’ve downloaded a ridiculous amount of games to try out, but none of them have stuck like Boomerang Fu. Why?
You can start playing immediately
It takes very little time to dive into a game of Boomerang Fu. It only takes a few menu presses to go from the title screen to a match, with the character selection being a pretty quick process. There are no complicated pairing processes or time to set up the max stats for your character.
Compare that to Fly Together, another game I was unable to spread to my friends. That game takes special use of the Nintendo Switch Joy Cons which need to be calibrated (and it usually takes a while). By the time the game is ready to be played, the momentum is lost. Similarly, Ultimate Chicken Horse, a personal favorite of mine, also struggles with setup. Customizing your character and selecting a stage requires platforming which, while an interesting tutorial, makes getting into a game take longer.
Stupid Simple Controls
There are only 4 buttons to use in Boomerang Fu: Your left-stick to move, and 3 buttons that control throwing, slicing, and dashing. With that, getting a new player started is painless. In addition, by default matches start with a tutorial round which makes it easy to pick up and play. One of the biggest surprises for me was that nongamers were actually able to learn the game pretty quickly and have a blast. Also, my friends and I usually mix cocktails into our gaming, so the simpler controls are definitely appreciated when reaction times start to slow.
Super Smash Bros., while a ton of fun, isn’t the kind of game to easily draw in non-gamers. Every button on the Switch Pro controller is used, and it’s not the kind of game you can easily dive into without some prior experience. Ultimate Chicken Horse also struggles with this, as the game requires some platforming prowess that non-gamers haven’t built up.
Fair and Balanced Gameplay (not in the Fox News way)
I love Mario Kart. But one of its problems is that, if you play with someone who is really, really good (not to brag, but I’m pretty good), it ends up not being a fun experience because there is the sense that the win is inevitable. The other extreme is Mario Party, where even being skilled at the minigames really doesn’t have a huge effect on actually winning the game.
Boomerang Fu is one of those games that is easy to play and tough to master, but even masters can struggle. After playing a few matches, power-ups are eventually added to the fray, with abilities like explosives, telekinesis, and teleportation making players change strategies on the fly. Even if you consider yourself pretty good at the game, an opponent with stacked power-ups could still leave you splattered on the wall. This makes it so that many matches feel more neck-to-neck, without one player gaining a ridiculous lead.
Appealing Aesthetics
Some of the games I’ve tried to introduce have actually fallen flat because of the aesthetics of the game. Classic shooters like Doom and Quake never really hit it off because at this point the graphics feel super dated, and other party games like Marooners and Headsnatchers aren’t as polished and feel more like you’re playing a Miniclip (2003 throwback) game from your browser.
Boomerang Fu runs extremely smoothly, even when 6 players are stocked with 3 power-ups each. In addition, I guess the overall vibe of the game (cute food and drinks running around Japanese-inspired backgrounds with EDM-y music in the background), pleases my Yuppie friends.
Other Fantastic Examples
So Boomerang Fu has a few things going for it: a quick setup with easy-to-learn controls, balanced gameplay, and smooth graphics. Are there other games that fit this mold? Some of the most successful games I’ve introduced are:
This game plays pretty similarly to Boomerang Fu except you play as an archer in a 2D world. The control scheme is simple, the retro art style is cute, and if you get sick of killing each other, there is a cooperative mode too.
This is a cooperative game where you play as a, uh, face with arms? Your goal is to reach the end of the stage, using only the shoulder buttons to grab and stick to move. It’s pretty easy to learn, but your index fingers are guaranteed to be sore after gripping them super tightly.
This is a cooperative game with up to 8 players where you need to reach a goal using a variety of gimmicks. The only controls are moving and jumping, which makes it very easy to pick up and play. You’re guaranteed to love it (but loving your friends after playing is not guaranteed).