Have you ever played Street Fighter and thought to yourself, “God, I would enjoy this game so much more if it was Leo Tolstoy wailing on Charles Dickens. I just can’t enjoy a fighting game unless it’s made up of classic writers!”
Well, game developer Avos has you covered, you incorrigible weirdo! Their new game on Steam, Write ‘N’ Fight, lets you choose your favorite (white, male) writer from the literary canon, and use them to beat your least favorite writer to a pulp.
The game was supposed to come out in Fall 2021, but was pushed back to August 22, 2022. News of the game went viral when Twitter user @riley_fox posted a screenshot of Ernest Hemingway punching H.P. Lovecraft in the groin.
According to Avos’s description on the Steam store, the writers fight each other “in the arenas that were inspired by their work,” like libraries, deserts, snowy forests, and castles. In addition to each writer’s basic moves, Avos says, “each character can summon his own ‘magic’ arena where he becomes the boss of the level for a short amount of time.”
Unfortunately, the game has two big problems at the moment. The first problem is that it’s super buggy. According to reviews on Steam, the game constantly crashes and certain modes don’t work. The developers have responded to some of the most critical reviews saying that they’re working on a fix.
The second problem is that, as mentioned above, the game consists entirely of male writers, almost all of whom are white. Do people really still think this what the literary canon looks like? Today, in the year 2022 of the common era? If I want to watch Murasaki Shikibu duke it out with Emily Dickinson, am I really just out of luck?
Maybe the developers didn’t really think this concept through. Or maybe … they’re trying to tell us something. Maybe what we think is the white male “literary canon” has always been nothing more than a cover for a giant fight club. Maybe the revenue from their writing has only ever served to finance their fight venues and post-bout medical care. Maybe all those historical salons and gatherings we’ve heard about were just basement brawls!
All white men’s clubs are secretly fight clubs anyway,* so this explanation for Write ‘N’ Fight‘s roster seems like the most sensible one. Sure, some of these writers lived hundreds of years apart and technically couldn’t have fought each other in real life, but honestly, writers have faced bigger hurdles than that.
Anyway, Write ‘N’ Fight is now available on Steam, although you might want to hold off on downloading it until they fix the bugs.
* A trusted source told me this.**
** I’m the trusted source. I told myself about the fight clubs for the purposes of this article.
(featured image: Avos)
