REVIEW - Stick it to the Stickman embraces chaos to great effect
Corporate slapping.
By Jonathan Garrett
15/09/25
Reviewed on PC.
Review copy provided by Devolver Digital.
Stick it to the Stickman’s unabashed irreverence makes a strong impression from the outset. You’ll quickly realise how unhinged this experience is, and we can confidently say it’s all the better for it. As a physics based, rapidly escalating brawler, developer Free Lives (responsible for the equally silly Anger Foot) have fully embraced an off kilter sense of humour to great effect, centering on a parody of corporate greed and the cutthroat nature of capitalism wrapped in a relatively simplistic beat ‘em up.
Visually it evokes Human Fall Flat and Gang Beasts, with a simplistic art style designed to emphasise the slapstick nature of the combat. You’ll quickly find yourself flailing around with reckless abandon, as the ever increasing challenge leads to a frantic melee of spammed abilities and mad dashes to secure the next ability upgrade. There’s a wide variety of playable characters on offer, each with their own playstyles and unique traits. You’ll likely find yourself gravitating to a particular move set, which in our case was anyone that embraced throwing knifes and tasers.
Each move can be upgraded twice during each run, with some hysterical boosts applied to lower level abilities. Just when you think you’ve seen it all, you’re given the option of an exploding package or flurry kick that will keep the surprises flowing. For a game that is built fundamentally on repeat runs, there is a surprising amount of variation thrown in across enemy types, unlockable moves, and special modifiers that keeps things fresh.
It speaks volumes that the gameplay’s singular focus keeps the experience from feeling too fleeting or throwaway; we found ourselves becoming quite invested in the progression of our mega corp, as new upgrades and challenges are unlocked as you rack up the big bucks. Although there are moments where some higher level enemy abilities feel cheap (the intermittent force hold ability used by higher level executives needs to go in the bin) you’ll feel the pull to keeping forging ahead.
Stick it to the Stickman is a pleasant surprise, and another tonal swing from publisher Devolver that sits neatly alongside their similarly wacky output.
Be the Boss.
WORTH IT?
At the bottom of every game review, we ask the question: Worth it? And the answer is either “Yeah!” or “Nah”, followed by a comment that sums up how we feel. In order to provide more information, we also have “And” or “But”, which follows up our rating with further clarification, additional context for a game we love, or perhaps a redeeming quality for a game we didn’t like.
YEAH!
Stick it to the Stickman is a wild and unpredictable brawler that will get its hooks in you.
AND
There’s plenty of reasons to keep coming back thanks to varied character traits, unhinged weapons, and escalating challenges.
4/5 - GREAT
TARPS?
At the bottom of some of our articles, you’ll see a series of absurd looking images (with equally stupid, in joke laden names). These are the TARP badges, which represent our ‘Totally Accurate Rating Platform’. They allow us to identify specific things, recognise positive or negative aspects of a games design, and generally indulge our consistent silliness with some visual tomfoolery.
