Move or Die is a party game for up to four players by Those Awesome Guys (that's their name – really!). In it, you and up to three other crazily-coloured friends jump around, passing bombs, stomping on each other and playing a variety of game modes. And we mean a variety – your characters might stay the same, but the game's rules change every 20 seconds!

Game on

The platforming physics in the game as cartoony as the game itself looks. You slip and slide around, and your friends will be doing the same. Whether you're playing as a pillow or a top hat with arms and legs, you'll be on roughly equal footing, although there are differences, in character size if nothing else.

Beyond characters, there's a variety of game modes, too. If you're so inclined, you can make some yourself. Although every mode is conceptually simple, there's a lot to learn when you'll be playing a different one every 20 seconds!

Good game, bad players, beautiful developers

That headline might sound a little harsh: after all, it's a rare game where a review is willing to call the players "bad". But that was the subject of many, many complaints prior to recent versions of Move or Die. As noted, you need XP to improve your roster of characters and unlock content. But once upon a time, you wouldn't get EXP if a game ended prematurely. And if you were winning, the host would often quit, ending the game and depriving you of your hard-earned XP.

Well, no more. As of this writing, the game drops AI bots in to replace players who leave, and if the host leaves, the host changes to an existing player. Thus, losing a game you're winning and the XP that comes with it is quite rare. It may be able to happen if all players leave except for you, but this didn't occur in any of our testing.

Still, it bears noting that you must play online to gain XP. You can't play locally with friends. We weren't able to test if playing online with three other friends allows this, but it could go either way. On the one hand, the ability to play online with strangers is great: it lets you enjoy the game without three friends who also own it. On the other hand, the game is marketed as a party game, one that'll shake your f riendships to their core. So that seems like the best way to play it. And if youc an't gain XP that way... well, that seems a little odd.

Moving to buy it?

Overall, Move or Die is the game it promises to be. Thanks to the proliferation of multiplayer with strangers, and how you need to play online to unlock content anyway, it's likely that it won't be as friendship-ruining as advertised – but that's probably for the best. The game sees frequent updates, adding content and fixing problems, and that means it's a pretty safe purchase. The only problem is the potential lag, inherent to peer-to-peer multiplayer, you might encounter online or with distant friends. For best results, get a 4-pack and play with friends – but you don't have to.