Baron: Fur Is Gonna Fly on the Nintendo Switch is a title from another age of video games. It feels right at home in the early to mid-1990s when multiplayer games were pretty much limited to a bunch of friends on the couch. You and a bunch of friends select an animal pilot, a WWI-era biplane, and a wild and crazy powerup before taking the fight to the skies.

This is the multiplayer-focused style of game that I really love. You fly about a single screen and attempt to shoot down all the other players. The idea is about as simple as it gets while still offering up enough to keep competitive players engaged along with friends. It never takes itself too seriously and provides as many laughs as anger-inducing battles.

What keeps Baron: Fur Is Gonna Fly interesting is the control scheme that it employs. Getting into the air is simple while becoming the next Red Baron will take time and an understanding of the detailed movements you can pull off. Since everything takes place on a single screen your planes will enter and exit the screen much like Pac-Man. This means you’ll need to be aware of the pilots around you on the screen but also from those coming at you from of screen.

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There’s nothing like a couple of players duking it out and some asshole swoops in from above like a man on fire, unleashing a massive special that kills both players. Death comes to everyone in Baron: Fur Is Gonna Fly. It can be a slightly frustrating experience until you drop that K/D ratio mentality and simply enjoy the experience of blasting friends for fun and not status.

Everyone starts from the runway and hit the “A” button to initiate takeoff. Flying is as quick as gaining speed requires you to dive up and then swoop up to gain momentum. You can also loop about with enough speed to lose enemies of set up a new attack vector. You’ll be crashing a bit while you adjust to the controls but once you get it it’s easy as pie. Special weapons can be dropped or activated with the “B” button and your mounted machine gun can be used at will in the air with the “A” button.

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But you won’t always have a bunch of friends to play with, meaning you’ll have to oftentimes rely on AI bots for single-player gaming. Understand that this is a multiplayer-focused game and single-player gaming isn’t as fun, mostly because there is no story here as it’s very arcade focused. You play alone to do a little practicing, but outside of that you’ll likely never boot Baron: Fur Is Gonna Fly when you are all alone at home.

This is a shame because a game like this while amazing with friends, would still be pretty great with online opponents. Lacking an online mode isn’t a dealbreaker but it sure hurts the longevity of the title. It’s the sort of game you bring to a party every now and then but it isn’t great for much else. I don’t often care for online multiplayer, but this title screams for it.

I should note that there actually is a single-player “Story Mode” but calling it a full-featured mode is a stretch. You can play solo or in co-op (that’s pretty cool) and simply take on wave after wave of enemy pilots. It the bare minimum you could do to call it a story mode, but to its credit, there isn’t much they could do with a single-screen experience.

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Baron: Fur Is Gonna Fly features a number of game modes and you can set a bunch of parameters that players must abide by. This helps keep each game interesting with some minor adjustments. The special abilities (there are 13 of them) add a wildcard element to the adventure. Dropping a black hole on a group of players is neat, pulling a loop and dropping an anvil to crush an attacker always causes annoying screams. It’s a blast experimenting with each of them and finding the one that suits your style of play.

The cast is really cute and made up of a crazy cadre of characters, and while each plays the same, your choice in aircraft does impact how you tackle opponents. Light craft move about fast and take wide turns, heavy planes are slower by making banking maneuvers mare tighter, and the medium craft does everything down the middle.

Overall this is a great party game that will work out great when heading to a casual party with some friends. This is the sort of experience that you’ll see at conventions with groups of people huddled around the screen laughing it up. But if you are a recluse or lack any friends (I don’t even know 8 people) this one is going to mostly be taking up space in your library and at $20 that’s a bit of a hard pill to swallow for such a shallow experience.

“Baron: Fur Is Gonna Fly is a total blast in very, very specific settings”

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Final Score: 2.8/5

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*A copy was provided for this review*

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