River City Girls

About

River City Girls is a beat-em-up video game directed by Adam Tierny and Bannon Rudis and developed by WayFoward. The game is a spinoff of River City Rollers: Underground, and features female characters Kyoko and Misako working to save male series mainstays Kunio and Riki. The game was released on PC from Steam, Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4 and Xbox One.

History

The game was developed by WayForward and published by Arc System Works. It was directed by Adam Tierny and Bannon Rudis.^[1] The game is a beat-em-up 2D action game, and similar to other games in the River City Rollers series. Development took three years. It was released on September 5th, 2019 on Steam, Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4 and Xbox One.

Reception

The game opened to fairly positive reviews from the press. Kotaku^[2] wrote, "The animation is smooth and the pixels colorful, as I’ve come to expect from a Wayforward joint. The controls are responsive and the fighting moves impactful… It’s mainly River City Girl’s style that sets it apart from its progenitors. This River City is bright, colorful, and modern, peppered with fashion plate background characters deftly dodging errant attacks." Nintendo Life^[3] favorably compared it to Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, saying it was a satisfying, entertaining beat-em-up. In a less-favorable review, Game Informer^[4] wrote that some gameplay elements were needlessly frustrating, such as not being able to know the effects items have before buying them. The game has Mostly Favorable reviews out of 248 players on Steam as of September 9th, 2019.^[5]

Online Presence

After the game's release, it began seeing a following on YouTube, as streamers played the game on their channel, such as former Super Best Friends Play members Matt McMuscles (shown below, left) and Pat Boivin (shown below, right). The game has no official subreddit, but there is a thread on /r/Games^[6] compiling reviews that has gained over 400 points. There is also a page for the game on TV Tropes^[7] as well as a dedicated Wiki.^[1]

Search Interest

External References