‘Animal Arena’ is a Wacky Arena Battling Game for 1-4 Players that’s Launching November 9th – TouchArcade

Back in March developer Jussi Simpanen (aka Adventure Islands) launched the maddeningly cute, and just plain maddening, survival game Poor Bunny! on mobile devices, and now with the end of the year fast approaching he’s ready to release another animal-based mobile game, this one titled Animal Arena. It’s funny because while the two games are quite different from each other in most ways, they definitely share some DNA.

Poor Bunny! is a single screen game that controls like a platformer, and your job is to run and jump around the arena while all manner of different hazards pop up, with the goal of avoiding those hazards for as long as possible. Animal Arena is also a single screen game, and also has the core mechanics of platforming, but here your goal is to bop up to 3 other players in the field on the head and whichever one of you can bop the others the most wins the game.

The platforming is even more streamlined in Animal Arena, as your character runs on their own with only a single button for you to control. A single tap makes you jump, and a double-tap makes you switch directions. This might sound perhaps TOO streamlined but in reality it makes the game very enjoyably chaotic. The ability to change directions can be used very strategically and there are a ton of wacky power-ups that will pop up during play to keep things nice and spicy.

The levels themselves also feature unique elements and there are a ton of them to play on, and similarly there are a ton of different animal characters to unlock and play as too. The multiplayer is confined to same device only, which works great with the game’s one button controls, but it would definitely be fun to have some sort of online mode or even just local wireless to play against other humans using your own screen.

Still, Animal Arena is quite a bit of fun for anyone who has ever wished that Super Smash Bros, Super Crate Box, and Puzzle Bobble would all have a weird baby, and you can play that weird baby when it launches for free with ads (and an ad-removal IAP option, naturally) on November 9th. It’s available for pre-order right now on the iOS App Store and available for Android pre-registration on the Google Play Store.