ExitMan Deluxe

Genre: Arcade / Party Game

Players: 1-4 Competitive (Local), 2-100 Competitive (Online)

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Review:

ExitMan is a family-friendly Arcade-style Party Game first released on iOS in 2014, ported to Android mobile devices in 2021, and then making its way to consoles in 2023, when it was released on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch in this “Deluxe” version of the game. The gameplay here is very simple – players control a character who can move left and right on the screen, and must quickly scramble to gaps in a falling ceiling before getting squashed. It’s the sort of game design we’ve seen in countless videogames over the years (especially Platformers), but ExitMan makes this the sole focus of its gameplay, and makes it a challenge to see how long you can survive as the game progressively gets faster.

The presentation here is extremely simple, with a white background and one flat color for the floor, ceiling, and characters (usually green), and those characters are represented by extremely simple designs (by default, it’s just a stick figure, but you can purchase additional skins using in-game currency). This is backed by energetic music that works well enough but isn’t memorable and largely gets overshadowed by the videogamey digitized sound of the ceiling repeatedly crashing to the ground.

I need to take a moment to highlight one place where this game’s presentation is highly questionable though – this game’s file size is 888MB, which is stunning given how absolutely low-fidelity this game’s visuals and sound are. There is nothing in this game to justify a file size that’s nearly 1GB.

As for the gameplay, there are a few different game modes to play through here. There’s an endless mode, naturally, as well as a variant that supports up to four local players competing to outlast each other. There’s another variant that allows you to challenge 99 other players online in a Battle Royale-style survival match, though it’s not like you see these other players – they’re represented by tiny person symbols that get scratched out if they fail. There’s a Vs. Computer mode that works much like the local multiplayer mode but with a bot. And finally, there’s a level-based mode that has specific challenges with a finite number of rounds to survive.

While all of this works well enough, the problem is that it’s all highly repetitive. There’s not much variety or nuance to the gameplay, it’s just running left and right to the location of the gaps in the ceiling. That’s it. Over and over again.

For $5, I suppose ExitMan makes for a decent Party Game, but it’s not one your party will want to play for very long before moving on to something else. There’s just not enough variety here to keep things interesting, and all the different game modes here do little to change that fact.

tl;dr – ExitMan is a family-friendly Arcade-style Party game where players must run left and right to get under gaps in the ceiling before it comes crashing down to squash those underneath it. There’s a good variety of game modes here, and the gameplay is accessible enough that anyone can play it, but it’s so simple and repetitive that it’s not likely to hold your interest for very long. I suppose for $5, it might make for a mildly amusing distraction, but it’s not a distraction you’re likely to enjoy for long before moving on to something else. And in the meantime, the 888MB file size is going to be hogging space on your Nintendo Switch despite the game having an extremely simple and unimpressive presentation that absolutely does not justify that bloated file size.

Grade: C

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