Thoughts on Furi by Nicholas McDaniel

Boss rushes have been a part of gaming for some time now. From the puzzle like battles against massive creatures in the main game of Shadow of the Colossus and Titan Souls, to smaller boss rush modes meant to serve as filler in games like in Super Smash Bros. Brawl and the boss rush that Bloodborne should totally have. They often provide the player with a sense of accomplishment or relief. Furi is no different. This tense, difficult arena style boss rush game from The Game Bakers ditches Shadow of the Colossus’s massive beasts and puzzle like fights for smaller, faster, multi-phased bosses with a variety of attacks for you to anticipate and respond to in a moment’s notice. You, as the Stranger, must battle your imprisoners to escape this strange, orbital prison above a planet, presumably Earth, all while accompanied by strange purple rabbit man known as The Voice who gives you small looks into the interesting story of this game through brief details of each boss before you fight them.

“The Jailer is the key. Kill him, and you’ll be free.”

I’ll be honest, when I first played Furi, I wasn’t a big fan. I could see potential in it and I liked the atmosphere, but the gameplay often felt unfair with some weird timing on the counter system the game has. But as I played more, I realized that I was just bad and had to improve upon myself. After a few failures and couple bosses under my belt, attacks that normally took a huge chunk of health out of me, now served as openings for me to use to my advantage. This is all thanks to the tools that Furi provides you from the very start of the game. There are no upgrades, no leveling, and no new abilities. The attacks you use to take down the tutorial boss (who is no pushover either) are the same ones you will use to finish off the final boss: slash, dodge, shoot, and counter. The gameplay itself is fairly brutal, it definitely doesn’t pull any punches. However, it’s still somewhat forgiving. You and your opponent both have health bars. Yours you can slightly refill with each successful counter. The first to empty their enemy’s health, regains all of their own health and KO’s their enemy 1 time. You can be KO’d 3 times before it’s game over, but each time you KO the boss, you regain one of your “lives” to the maximum of 3. This allows for a test run for each phase of the boss for you to essentially preview with no consequences… provided you KO them the second time around. After you take down the boss’s first health bar, they will generally lock you into a small circle around them for a more one on one duel. Take down their health bar again, and you KO them and they move on to their next phase with a new set of attacks. while each of the bosses use the same kind of attacks – bullets, slashes, and AOE’s – they are all used differently and require different movements to dodge making each encounter memorable and unique. The bosses usually have a focus on a specific aspect of the game as well. The bullet hell fight against The Song is very different from the twisted game of hide and seek against the sniper known as The Burst and even more so from the purely dualistic fight against The Edge.

The intensity of the game only settles down between bosses when the Stranger rather slowly walks to the next arena. This may be looked at as boring, but for me, it provided a nice little breather before ramping up the action again. The controls during this section are very strange with the camera constantly switching angles, but luckily you may have the Stranger automatically walk himself, allowing you to gaze at the amazing, unique environments of each of the Jailers’ areas and listen to the greatly atmospheric music in case you missed it before while you were focusing on dodging 500 bullets. The environments aren’t the only unique aspect of Furi. Each of the characters are bursting with creativity and have interesting origins and motivations for why they are keeping you imprisoned. They are so interesting that this is the first game that made me want to actually unlock the concept art by achieving a better rank on the fight. The higher your rank, the more of the concept art is revealed. All of this, plus a “Furier” mode that makes every boss feel like new with new patterns, a dedicated speedrun mode which cuts out all cinematic scenes and downtime between fights, and even multiple endings, means Furi has plenty of reasons to keep you coming back to improve your skill even after you finish its relatively short story.

Of course, no game is perfect, and though I’ve given it a lot of credit, even Furi has its shortcomings. As said before, the controls felt off at first and that could drive away some players. And the fighting style that each boss uses means that the difficulty will vary between players. One of the hardest bosses for me was one of the first ones because I’m not as skilled at bullet hells as I am close quarters combat. There are also several hidden mechanics that I wasn’t even aware of until told by a friend such as the ability to charge your dodge to make it go farther as well as charging up your sword during a duel by moving the right stick in any direction. That being said, Furi doesn’t overextend itself. It knows what it is and sticks to it with astonishing variety in each of the fights.

Furi is not a game for everyone. It’s fast paced gameplay and surprising difficulty will most likely drive away several players, but for those who love skill based gameplay and moment to moment action where every victory is earned and every defeat is your own fault, Furi is the perfect fit.