Stick It to the Stickman Review: Was the Early Access Wait Worth It?

Stick It to the Stickman spent a full year in Early Access getting punched, shoved, and dragged toward release, and on September 23 it finally left the building. Developer Free Lives (the studio behind Broforce and Genital Jousting) and publisher Devolver Digital sent the game out with over 300,000 wishlists already stacked up on Steam, which is a big number for a floppy corporate beat-em-up about murdering your way to CEO. The question now is whether the full 1.0 build actually holds up once the honeymoon period wears off.

How It Compares to Gang Beasts and Human Fall Flat

Anyone who’s played Gang Beasts already knows the basic pitch: ragdoll physics, floppy limbs, and combat that’s funnier when it fails than when it works. Stick It to the Stickman leans into that same chaos but gives it an actual structure. Where Gang Beasts is mostly a sandbox for shoving friends off platforms, this game wraps the mayhem around a roguelite corporate ladder you climb floor by floor, unlocking weapons, coworkers, and increasingly unhinged bosses along the way. It’s closer in spirit to Human Fall Flat’s slapstick puzzle-solving crossed with a beat-em-up, except here the point isn’t to escape a level, it’s to wreck everyone standing between you and the executive suite. If you found Gang Beasts fun for twenty minutes and then forgot about it, the added progression here might be the thing that keeps you coming back.

What You’ll Actually Find in Stick It to the Stickman

The 1.0 update adds two new modes on top of what Early Access players already had. Billionaire Bunker sends you fighting downward through a facility, picking up passive abilities and special attacks before a genuinely weird final boss fight. Neurolink is the stranger of the two, letting you pick from nine character archetypes built around psychic powers instead of straightforward brawling. Both modes sit alongside new characters, new bosses, and extra level sections that weren’t in the Early Access build.

Combat itself is the usual physics-brawler chaos: chainsaws, hammers, and whatever else is lying around, all filtered through jittery ragdoll movement that makes every fight look like a fistfight between marionettes. It supports solo play, local co-op with split screen, and online multiplayer, plus Remote Play Together if your friends don’t own a copy yet. There’s also a level editor with Steam Workshop support, so the amount of content available on day one is already bigger than what a lot of full-price releases ship with.

Who Should Play This

This is a party game first and a single-player game second. It’s at its best with two or three other people in the room, screaming at a screen while your characters flail into each other instead of the enemy. Playing solo works fine for unlocking content and getting a feel for the combat, but a lot of the appeal is watching physics ruin someone else’s perfectly good combo. If your group already burned out on Gang Beasts or Fall Guys, the roguelite structure and the sheer amount of unlockable stuff here gives it more legs than most games in this genre.

System requirements are modest by 2026 standards. An Intel Core i7-6700 or Ryzen 5 1500X with a GTX 1050 Ti or RX 570 will get you 1080p at 30fps on low settings, and most mid-range PCs from the last few years will comfortably clear the recommended spec for 60fps.

Price & Where to Get It

Stick It to the Stickman is $11.99 on Steam, discounted 50% to $5.99 for launch week. It’s available on Windows and Mac, with no Linux build listed at launch. Given the amount of content already in the 1.0 release and the launch discount, it’s a reasonable pickup for anyone with a regular co-op group looking for something dumber and more physical than the usual couch co-op lineup.

You Might Also Like

Slay the Spire 2 Early Access Review: Worth Buying In Now?

Far Far West Is 2026’s Sleeper Early Access Hit

Arknights: Endfield Review: Was It Worth the Wait? (ESRB T)

Subnautica 2: How the Early Access Sequel Compares to the Original