Knuckle Sandwich, the RPG about fast food and cults, smashes Kickstarter goal in 12 hours

Knuckle Sandwich, the absurd, minigame-laden RPG about a boy working in a run-down diner, landed on Kickstarter earlier this week, and hit its $25,000 AUD (roughly $19,000) goal within 12 hours.

Tom compared it to EarthBound, the psychedelic 1994 SNES RPG, when he played a portion of it in 2015, while creator Andrew Brophy cites inspirations including Pokémon, Dragon Ball, Fargo, The Big Sleep, and American Psycho. Mix them all together and you get a surreal RPG involving a missing persons mystery and a fanatic cult.

In Knuckle Sandwich, you'll explore Bright City and get to know its wacky inhabitants, with each of its chapters set in a different part of the city. You'll fight enemies in a timing-based combat system that revolves around critical hits and dodges, while outside of combat you'll mostly be completing minigames that range from serving customers at the diner to a Dance Dance Revolution-style rhythm game.

"Mechanically speaking, my inspirations include Warioware, Rhythm Heaven, and Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga," Brophy says. "While quick reflexes and a good sense of rhythm helps with Knuckle Sandwich, my aim is to make the game as accessible as possible, so less-experienced players can still beat it without an overwhelming amount of difficulty."

It's expected to arrive in January next year. You can download a demo from its itch.io page.

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.