The game YAPYAP is a new entry in the burgeoning genre of co-op multiplayer games that often employ proximity voice chat. While it’s clearly aiming for slapstick moments and endless chaos, I also appreciate the hints towards deeper systems you can discover during runs to the arch mage’s tower. Here are some of my initial impressions on the game.
I have a regular co-op gaming crew, and we’ve tried a bunch of these games. I’m awful at Lethal Company, and Content Warning was fun for a few sessions, but didn’t stick with us. PEAK has been far and away the favorite for us to return to with a great balance of legitimate challenge and silliness that breaks the tension. I played YAPYAP for about three hours with one friend, and we enjoyed our time with it.
The challenge of YAPYAP is to hit a threshold of Chaos points over several nights of terrorizing the arch mage’s tower. You gain Chaos by destroying items and generally being a nuisance, getting extra points if you complete tasks the game offers, like defacing objects (by pissing on them with a piss spell) or casting specific spells on monsters.
Before even throwing spells into the mix, I liked the basic exploration of the tower and the destruction mechanics. You can grab and toss items around with satisfying, weighty physics, sort of like Skyrim, or the item interactions in the Amnesia games. Some things, like heavy statues, can’t fall from one tiny mage’s push, but multiple players working together can topple them.
Silly Spells & Scary Guys
The game has a charming aesthetic, going for a look reminiscent of retro PlayStation and making me think fondly back to the CRT days. Paired with the juvenile humor and shenanigans unfolding each night, it definitely works, and it lulls you into complacency before throwing some legitimately scary monster designs your way.
The twist on proximity chat that YAPYAP deploys is the use of your microphone to cast spells. New wands you find give you access to a few spells you activate with their trigger word. For example, the aforementioned Piss Spell is obtained by obtaining the Grotesque Wand and saying “Piss Yuck.”
There are even modifiers to spells you can look up in the Grimoire on the top floor of the cottage, like “Dub Piss Yuck,” which gives the Piss Spell a split stream. The more advanced wands will enhance your destruction capabilities a ton, and make magic pandemonium pretty much inevitable as multiple players start shouting spells to break things, and hit monsters that intrude on your good time.
I can’t say we followed the advice the developers give on the game’s Steam description to “Stay quiet, cause distractions, hide, and when all else fails – run.” When the aim for players is to maximize mayhem and destruction, I don’t want to hide around. I wasn’t even playing with my jumpiest friends (you know who you are), so in future sessions, stealth will be even less possible. Luckily, more advanced spells can help you avoid or incapacitate baddies, while never feeling too overpowered.
Charmed so Far
I will need to try more runs with a bigger group to really know if this will land in our permanent co-op rotation, but I’m very happy with YAPYAP initially. There was a nice range of threats, from silly to very creepy, that I won’t spoil, as those discoveries are my favorite part of these kinds of games. I appreciated that you can do a lot of damage just by tossing stuff around, and with the air spell-focused wand you’re given for free at the beginning.
If the game can sustain longer runs with a variety of challenges beyond just growing point thresholds, and continue throwing out weird discoveries in the tower, I could see YAPYAP definitely becoming a staple game for my group. It has a low barrier to entry with a welcoming $10 price point and the capability to run on both Mac & PC, a nice pro that’s worth noting, given that other heavy hitters in the genre like PEAK, R.E.P.O., and Lethal Company are PC-only (at the time of writing).
This game won’t convert people who aren’t interested in this genre in the first place, you already pretty much know if you’ll be into this if you liked the trailer. That said, it delivers on the promise well enough for me to want to get my group together to play more, especially since I can use my existing game knowledge to prank them as they’re just starting out.
YAPYAP is available on Steam now.
Image Credits
Author screenshots, credit Maison Bap
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