Ever wanted to break into a rival wizard's tower and just fuck shit up? Well, then, do I have the game for you. Yapyap is the new co-op horror game on the block, managing to rise above the mountains of Lethal Company-likes thanks to its ingenious use of proximity chat, wizards, and fire.
Featured as a demo in Steam Next Fest, Yapyap is already a winner for me, despite my friends and I only getting to play through one map. Dropped into some whimsical forest, you and four other friends take on the role of little minions serving a big bad wizard who has some beef with another spellcaster who lives in a big old castle full of cool trinkets and scary monsters.
Walking into the castle, you have just three days to wreak havoc, destroy everything in your path, steal valuable treasure, and find cool new wands with new and deadly spells. There are three spells per wand, with your base wand having: Aero-Bis, a spell that shoots a gust of wind forward, Temp-Esc, a spell that creates a small tornado, and Up-Dog, an enchantment once thought forgotten, which shoots you up into the air.
To cast these spells, you need to yell into your mic, which led to some predictably hilarious scenarios. One such moment saw a friend and me stuck in a pit with a giant sword-wielding monster who was trying to slice us in two. With the only exit being up, we found ourselves screaming Up-Dog as our spell meter filled back up. Needless to say, we didn't make it out alive, meaning our other two friends had to try and hoist our dead bodies back up the hole to take us to the extraction point (you lose money if you leave someone behind).
Our first attempt was a bit of a mess. You have to deal 2500 gold-worth in damages, and we barely topped 600 over three days. To be fair, the first day saw us all just casting spells at one another in the starting room of the castle. The best way to deal damage is to simply progress through the castle like a whirlwind, casting spells to break tables, pull paintings off the walls, or use the candles around the castle to set tapestries on fire. Anything to leave the fortress in a sorry state.
Between days you go back to your home base, where you can purchase more items and upgrade your wand, so you can do even more damage come the next run. On the second day, we went in with a little more confidence and the intention to do more than just mess about.
Unfortunately, all of our good intentions were stopped by a horde of weird goblin creatures that came barrelling down the stairs towards us after one of my friends accidentally opened the wrong door. There are only so many Up-Dogs one can cast to get you out of all that mess.
Then there was the third and last day, we somehow had to do three days' worth of destruction in one. First things first, we got to work on tearing up a potion-making room, clambering on the shelves, eating all the mushrooms and smashing all the potion pots. Then we progressed, dodging the angry enemies into a new room that had a giant ball puzzle on the wall.
To open up the next room, we had to solve this puzzle by somehow rotating a giant circle on the wall, guiding a ball through its maze to the centre point. At first, we tried walking left and right, but that didn't work. Then we tried yelling left and right, nada. Finally, one of my mates figured out that you're meant to screech 'OOOOOO' to turn left and 'EEEEEE' to turn right. I don't know how he got to that answer, but it worked, unlocking the next section of the castle and a little treasure chest that served us our first new wand.
The Astral Wand had three new spells tied to it: Blink, which allowed you to teleport a short range in front of you, Swap, that meant you could swap places with an object, and Astral Eyes, that sends you to the shadow realm, turning you invisible—sort of like when Frodo puts the One Ring on in Lord of the Rings. But that wasn't even the coolest wand we found. One of my mates managed to get his hands on a Piss Wand. Yeah, you heard me, a wand that can shoot piss out of it unlocked whole new levels of cursed.
But sadly, Frodo's Wand and all the piss in the world couldn't help us reach our destruction target. After not meeting our target, we were teleported into the hands of a giant and unhappy wizard who yelled something at us and proceeded to squish and kill us all instantly.
It was all a bit of a mess if I'm honest, and not in the way we needed it to be. But even still, Yapyap was one of the best co-op experiences I've shared in quite some time. Its unhinged nature, grainy pixels, and hilarious multiplayer hijinks reminded me of the early days of Lethal Company, something that very few multiplayer horror games have managed to do in the last couple of years. So please, do yourself a favour and check out its Steam Next Fest demo. Oh, and try to find the Piss Wand.
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