Currently in alpha, Gang Beasts is free to download and you should grab it right now. It’s a surprisingly nuanced multiplayer beat ‘em up that combines playgrounds packed with perilous physics and a control scheme that makes combat a sequence of shoving, grappling and tripping over your own fists. Rounds often come to a halt as the last Beasts standing collapse into a meat grinder together, unsure who is pushing toward and who is pulling away.

It’d the easiest thing in the world to enthuse about the moments that make up an hour-long session of Gang Beasts. There’s the initial reaction when a player learns to grab the bodyparts of an opponent. An incoming fist becomes a lever that can be used to ground the attacker, pivoting, feet planted, so that both characters end up locked in a violent embrace.

A skilled practictioner of the arts can lift an opponent, hurling them against walls or into meat grinders. Defensive moves transition into counters, sometimes accidentally, and a brawl becomes a hot sticky mess of body parts. I once had a persistent pugilist clutching my eyeball as she hung over the edge of a fatal drop, refusing to relinquish the ocular grip and admit defeat.

Here’s the thing – the joke works. Wibbly-wobbly characters, with far too much momentum and far-too tiny legs, are hilarious, particularly when they’re biffing one another in perilous environments. Every single scenario could be the climax of an action film, if all of the actors were replaced by slightly deflated sentient Space Hoppers. Actually, no, the Space Hoppers would have some semblance of agility – these creatures are like Morph wearing concrete shoes and tungsten gloves. You could watch somebody playing through the current set of levels on Youtube or around a monitor, and you’d be almost as entertained as you would be by playing the game yourself.

Eventually, if development moves in the right directions, there will be much more to the game than fifteen minutes of flailing amusement, and if that’s the case it’ll earn far more than the fifteen minutes of fame due to the usual comedy physics simulators. Gang Beasts contains the seed of an exceedingly relatable but complex combat engine that could lead to one of the greatest grappling games ever made. It’s the fulfilment of the mad promise that Sumotori Dreams planted in my mind all those years ago – comedic, physics-driven combat that rewards the players as much as the spectators. And just look at the planned boss battles. Delicious.