Pit People®

Beautiful and silly visual style paired with an amazing soundtrack, psychotic narrator and bonkers story make this an absolutely enjoyable experience.
The gameplay is humorously absurd, controls are trivial but the character customization and unit combinations make this a strategically deep and enjoyable experience. Throw ice-cream as a weapon, wear a fried-chicken bucket as armor and fight an evil cosmic teddy-bear as the main villain.
As far as tactical turn-based team battles go this is absolutely top-notch!

I will forever love everything the behemoth gave to my childhood with Castle Crashers and Battle Block Theatre. Then years later when they released this it made me remember why i love them. Goated game, just like the rest of their games! Idk if everyone shares the same views but i think these games are funny asf.

my penis is happy

This is a Behemoth game we are talking about...are you really going into here to read reviews? Great Game, great company behind it, i thank them for the great games i had in my childhood, thank you.

Its alright

One of the worst games I've ever played

I'm very nostalgic about The Behemoth, played their games since I was a teen.
And I've replayed them since then to make sure I wasn't blinded by nostalgia, and they hold up.
Castle Crashers is a fun spin on beat-em-ups, a genre I couldn't care less about, but the game managed to win me over with very simple, free and intuitive controls.
BattleBlock Theater is a platformer easily forgotten among its peers, but manages to stay relevant with some neat ideas, amazing narrator and a super entertaining co-op.
Pit People... is a crime against mankind.
One look at it would make you think it's a strategy or tactics RPG.
That IS the genre this game borrowed most from, but you might notice that they never exactly put "strategy" or "tactics" next to RPG on the store page, because they must know it doesn't meet the definition.
Why?
Because there's absolutely zero strategy involved in this game.
Let's go into how it all falls apart.

The Set-Up
Before I get into the core combat, let's address what's around it.
Instead of going from mission to mission, the game has a base and an annoying world map.
In the base you can equip your pit people to increase stats you can't fully understand, nor check again in combat, nor know how level ups affect them.
Great start, communication is obviously overrated!
You can also buy other items at the base, as well as select quests to embark on.
The world map is where you travel around, enemies everywhere, where running into them will trigger a battle.
You can also find NPCs who give you even more quests.
Navigating is obnoxious, as your field of view is extremely limited initially, when you still haven't explored an area.
Traveling is just not fun at all, which is impressive when you're able to play "walking simulators", as they're called by detractors.
Maybe it's because this feels like a complete waste of time, as I actually would have just greatly preferred a level select, since this adds nothing.
Not helped by there seemingly being three maps, on which you are placed on during a certain event where your base is transported somewhere else.
A change of scenery is good in theory, but since this gameplay sequence already sucks, this just makes things more frustrating.
Now, onto combat.

No strategy
You're looking at grid-based maps that you place your units on, and after ending your phase, they will automatically attack.
Sounds like a strategy RPG, right?
Let's just get the most major thing out of the way, you can't actually select your targets.
You heard me.
Your units decide randomly, with any enemy in range being a possible target.
Now, you might say that's not a big deal, just position your guys right!
First of all, don't play defense for a problem that didn't need to exist.
Second of all, in practice this is much harder to do, with how much enemy groups like to form and stick close to each other.
Furthermore, it becomes even more of an issue with ranged attacks.
Bows that should be great, in theory, but suck majorly as a result of random targeting.
It's utterly baffling that such a pointlessly dumb decision made it off the drawing board.
Unfortunately, this is a much bigger deal than you might think.
You can land in absolutely hair-pulling situations where problematic enemies refuse to die with little HP, because no one targets them, and more often than not, this is happening with multiple enemies at the same time, with none of your guys willing to finish one off.
Not being able to select your targets is outrageous enough, but then having the auto-targeting not even be based on some artificial intelligence, but TRULY random... now THAT is something not a single experienced game designer should have ever approved of.
Maybe you wonder why it's such a problem, this is The Behemoth, don't they make fun silly games?
Well, the game is not forgiving enough to allow this nonsense.

Unfairness
Pit People is hard as hell, but as you can imagine, for none of the good reasons.
There aren't challenges in this game, just unfair bullshit.
Regular encounters are nothing, it's the premade quests where it falls apart.
Many quests are simple enough and don't offer anything more difficult than normal battles.
In others, protecting NPCs and stopping them from dying gets added, and turns out those NPCs prefer to embrace death with open arms.
Throwing even more RNG elements like that in your missions can turn this game into a nightmare, and this only gets worse the more advanced your quests get, as then, guess what, they throw even more random garbage at you!
Get ready for quest objectives to change out of nowhere, get ready for the worst gimmicks imaginable, mainly ones that reposition you and certainly are rarely as predictable as you'd like.
This is where you really start to realize why this isn't described as a strategy game, there's no strategy that can prepare you for anything this game pulls out of its ass.
And it really does that, like cars full of enemies driving onto the map out of nowhere, knocking some of your guys in random places, and then of course those enemies exiting the car as well, surprise, reinforcements.
Frankly, all this needs its own section, hold on.


Everything about this game's design is bad, so help me God
You like reinforcements?
No?
Well, I wouldn't either if this way my only exposure to them in this sort of environment.
The more you play this game, the more it loves dragging out its harder missions for no reason, which mostly involved an ungodly amount of reinforcements that will sometimes triple or quadruple the amount of enemies you initially thought you'd deal with.
Since healing also isn't so reliable, it's also a battle of attrition that you're always on the losing side of.
Believe it or not, the side quests are a lesser offender than the actual main missions, who you'd think had more time poured into them.
Get ready for the most miserable gaming experiences of your life as you try to make your way through a repetitive mission that goes on forever due to a combination of endless reinforcements and horrible gimmicks, none of which I'm certain were playtested.
Also a random horrible stealth mission towards the end that was just part 1 of a massive quest.
If any of this, especially the car gimmick from earlier, sounds familiar to you... you might have the same realization I had.
All the random awful bullshit in this game... is exactly the kind of stuff The Behemoth normally does.
Except that usually those are aesthetic, in this game, every dumb idea someone seems to have had was included, often alongside equally ridiculous ones, were all terrible gameplay mechanics.
There wasn't any care of how things would come together or play like, they just threw everything out here, but didn't even see if it sticks.
That's the main problem, it feels like an artist's game, not a game designer's game.
Since the team originated on Newgrounds, I'm pretty sure this is actually the case.
We just got lucky that their previous games were simple and straightforward.
This one had a bigger scope and at least feigned deeper mechanics.
A game that should in theory please neither strategy RPG fans nor casual players who just like The Behemoth.
Somehow it did, maybe this game becomes bearable after grinding, or not trying to engage with as many of the recruitable characters you get, just focusing on a few.
Again, does this game want to be casual or not?
I certainly didn't bother anymore at some point, with 40% of sidequests done and being tired of the core gameplay, I just rushed through all main missions to end it, and that was somehow the worst the game had to offer.

Can't recommend this to ANYONE.
This isn't me hoping The Behemoth will do better next time, but me hoping they will never try something like this again.
Their skills lie elsewhere, not in game design.
Like the music, that was good.
Or the child-eating cannibals, huge fan!

Fun stupid humor and swingy unique tactics.

funny game

Too funny. Great gameplay. Find a friend and play it.

Filled with great mechanics to keep players entertained. I can't count the amount of times i've howled with laughter while playing!

10/10

It was fun but too short. I want MORE!

It good

only 16% through the game, and feeling good! Great game and continues off of BattleBlock Theatre in a great way! I am not usually into RTSs (apart from Civ) but Pit People has bridged that gap between tactical thinking and a silly, colourful and forgiving world that I need from other games.

good game

This is purely subjective but I feel that Behemoths need to keep their games simple makes them worse, not all of them but I'd say about half. CastleCrashers and BattleBlock are actually perfect, they are exactly what they need to be and they are really fun. Pit People is hindered by this lack of depth and by a lot, it's just not the type of game that's gonna benefit from being "simple". Its too niche of a game to interest a wide audience and its too basic to interest the kind of people who play stuff like XCOM (I say XCOM because its generally the same type of game Pit People is). There's a ton of cool systems but they all stop giving right when they'd get interesting. It really is a shame because Pit People is fun, It just could be so much better.

It's a Behemoth Game. What more needs to be said?

1

quite the exquisite game. work on dlc.

Chillest behemoth game, love the amount of content.

simple to pick up and play while also having a good amount of challenge

Funny game

fun game

It's a good game but definitely a bit too grindy, and the side quests are also a bit too difficult.

there are some people in this pit

banger

I don't know why, but I was under the impression this game wasn't well liked for years. It's actually a quite solid tactical RPG, plus the OST is composed of banger after banger

very fun

Despite hearing some negative things about this game, I was still hoping I'd enjoy the game, as I enjoyed the games The Behemoth released prior to releasing Pit People, and a friend of mine really enjoyed this game. Unfortunately, my experience with this game was pretty mixed. While I did ultimately decide to recommend it, it's only the story that barely pushed it to a recommendation for me, and the gameplay left a lot to be desired.

The story in this game is by far the best thing about it. It has the same goofy humour that The Behemoth is known for, even if it falls a little bit short of the story content of previous games (the narration and overall tone of the game can be a little bit overbearing and negative at times). It's still quite enjoyable though, with memorable characters and some fantastic humour. The story content was often the only thing compelling me to keep playing when the gameplay turned into a slog.

And become a slog it did. This game features turn-based combat, and unlike previous games from The Behemoth, it seems to be going for a greater emphasis on strategy and planning. Unfortunately, this approach fell short for me for a few reasons. First of all, the game really doesn't display information very well, especially for a game that's so heavily based on strategy, and there were many cases where I longed for more information to be displayed, especially during battles. Even a small tooltip to show some basic stats and info when hovering over a fighter would have gone a long way.

Secondly, the gameplay felt far to random and tedious. The game has a variety of different types of creatures which all have different strengths and weaknesses, and it encourages you to experiment with them. Unfortunately, battles are spread over a large map that's often visually obscured and filled with enemies and obstacles, and there's no indication of what enemies you will fight or what the win condition of a fight will be before you start it. Thus, there isn't really a way to build your team around a particular threat without playing the fight first. If you lose the fight or choose to back out, you'll have to navigate all the way back to the city to change your party and then all the way back to the fight (if it's even still there, as the location of the city randomly moves). Thus, it feels like the game either forces you to use the same party and pray you don't run into something that they can't fight well, which relies heavily on luck, or to constantly run back and forth to changing your party composition, which is extremely tiresome.

There were a number of other minor things that frustrated me as well.

• Some creatures' attacks relied almost entirely on luck to do anything, which made them feel useless to use, but frustrating to fight.
  
• Saving is only possible when you return to the city, which felt extremely unnecessary.
  
[*] Multiplayer just made combat worse, as the number of fighters on either side doubled, which made fights take way longer to finish and made combat drag out.

There were some times when I enjoyed combat, when the fights felt fair, and it felt like my positioning and strategy actually made a difference, but most of the game felt unfair and tedious, which I did not enjoy.

The game looks great, and has the charming animated art style that The Behemoth is known for. It also ran well, and I don't recall running into any bugs.

TL;DR This grid-based turn-based fighting game has a great art style and story, and runs very well, but does a poor job of communicating important information, relies too much on luck, and often feels very tedious. If you really enjoy The Behemoth's style of humour, or really like turn-based combat, you may enjoy this game, but others will probably want to avoid it.

try not to get scared, scariest stories...

"i sure do loves having a son!" said horatio, "fuck you" said the fuck you bear as it kidnaps his son

very underated game 10/10

t

good game

made me reconnect with my cyclops dad that lives in a whale thanks behemoth

Good entry level Tactic RPG, funny story and cool combat, is a win-win for that price, you really can manage the random components in the middle of the combats, go for it

Lovely built game with handcrafted characters and matching sound, design and the right amount of weirdness.

// Unfortunately the main story is a bit short

I love Behemoth but like the game could be better. I don't mind strategy games like Persona 5 Tactica, Mario and Rabbids, etc- but this one I just find lacking in fun and its sometimes too complex with a couple mechanics. The Story rocks tho, tying into Battleblock Theater's Ending is a power move and it fits surprisingly well

Had this game on console before PC. So good I bought it twice.

Yes there is 300 hours worth of content in this game, and it's still funny the whole time. Best Behemoth game and I mean it (as long as you like turned based games)

Apparently there is 200+ hours of content in this game but the story alone is worth the 20$ (Especially if you played Battleblock).

Good Game

I LOVED this game but personally the fights are a bit long theres not much planning you cam do when you are next to two enemies you cant select which one you want to attack and the story was pretty short but with the amount of content there seems to be after the short story plus the pit working extremely well to keep you engaged if you dont know what to do I cant say I dislike this game like some people would say and I have no idea why it died so hard (tbf this game is like 7 years old now), I would absolutely recommend this game but only when its on sale as it still has the behemoth humor and good voice acting, hopefully update 8 when it does come out at least adds workshop support <3

Weird, stupid tactics.

good

The combat is so boring that they gave you an auto-combat option

For Spain.

best behemoth game ever

забавная игра :)
играл в почти каждую игру этой студии и мне очень нравится их стиль

Buy this game now and 10% of the proceeds go directly to Stamper's meth addiction

Underrated and simplistic little gem from a largely forgotten company, easily worth at least trying out