Punch Club for Xbox One

A boxing training strategy game

Punch Club is a single-player strategy game that invites players into a gritty, 1980s-inspired world where they must navigate the rise of an underdog fighter. Developed by Lazy Bear Games, it’s available on PCs, mobile devices, and gaming consoles. 

Train to become the greatest fighter and find your father's murderer in Punch Club. The name makes it easy to assume that it is a fighting game. However, the game is more of a training simulator. It is a fighter management sim that combines RPG and tycoon elements.  It stars a young, shirtless man who trains hard to become the best fighter around.  

Climb the ranks 

The story of the Punch Club starts with the tragic death of the protagonist's father. This explains the rationale behind his goal of becoming the toughest dude on the block. Everything after that is mostly just training. You play the game by selecting from different menu items and actions. All of which must be performed by your character. The core of the game is to choose opponents, which you need to fight.  

Fighting in the game is hands-off. You’ll need only to select and initial two-function moves suited to your character. The moves can be a punch and a dodge or a low kick and block, which set the procedural move rotation for each round. You can adjust the move set after every round. Fights are rewarded with coins, which you can use to unlock more moves. Eventually, you can use these tokens to change the number of your moves to three specific styles of fighting.  

The more you train and get rewards, the higher you climb the ranks. On the downside, the gameplay is limited. Sure, you can earn moves by purchasing them with your earned coins. Although everything still devolves into just selecting menu items. The difficulty can be a pain too in this game. The opponents you'll face are very sporadic. Sometimes you'll face a way too powerful opponent only to face a weakling afterward. Moreover, sometimes you face an opponent who is weaker than you, yet you still end up losing. 

More than fighting 

Punch Club is not just about climbing up the ranks by defeating opponent after opponent. You’ll also be juggling friendships, love life, work, recreational time, and possible stardom. Every decision matters, especially in your social life. From the map, you can go to various places. You can go to your construction job to earn money, or you can go to the gym to increase your fighting stats. 

You can also go to the grocery store to buy your food, and even go home to sleep, eat, and watch television. The game maximizes your parameters to include aspects of life, such as hunger, happiness, and money. Juggling these locations and activities can be odd at first, although once you get the hang of it, it’ll be satisfying. It also comes with retro visuals with pixel-perfect characters and environments, which will remind you of the 16-bit era.  

It may look old-school, but everything in the game is lively with smooth animation, detailed backgrounds, and appealing color schemes. The game also complements the graphical style with retro chiptunes and sound effects, forming an authentic early 90's feel. Moreover, the game comes with very dry humor. There are a lot of funny moments, especially when you interact with some of the NPCs in the game. 

Version 1.0.6. update 

With its updated properties, the game offers a few handy quality-of-life updates and bug fixes. This update primarily addressed various bugs that players encountered, such as crashes during specific in-game events and incorrect stat displays during training or fights. These fixes ensured a smoother and more stable gameplay experience, particularly during key moments like tournaments and story progressions. Moreover, some tweaks were made to the game's balancing, particularly with stat degradation and fighting difficulty. This helped make the resource management aspects of the game feel less punishing, while still providing a strategic challenge. 

The "Skip Beginning” option is now available when starting a new game. This option allows you to bypass the Silvers League and begin directly at the start of the Iron Fist DLC. Players will be properly leveled for this stage, and you’ll possess 2000GP to customize your stats and moves as a fighter. Additionally, as you near the game's final stage, a new prompt will appear, notifying you that the last stage of the game is about to start, making all side quests unavailable. You can either tick the yes or no button.  

Version 1.0.6 brought minor visual enhancements, cleaning up parts of the user interface to make navigating menus and stats clearer. This streamlined the player experience, especially for newcomers who may have found certain mechanics a bit opaque. Additionally, if players were using mobile devices or lower-end hardware, this update improved performance by optimizing memory usage and fixing performance drops. The game ran more efficiently on a wider range of systems after this patch. 

Train hard in this boxing management game 

For players who are into boxing games, Punch Club is a must-play. It delivers a satisfying mix of strategy, simulation, and nostalgic action. The game’s appeal lies in its balance of time management and its clever nods to pop culture. It offers a satisfying strategy gameplay experience with an accompanying story. Aside from boxing, this game also lets you navigate your personal and social life.