Thank you Mega Cat Studios for sending us this game to review!

Windjammers was released in 1994 by Data East on the Neo Geo arcade system. It’s a fast-paced Frisbee game that plays similarly to pong or air hockey. Log Jammers is clearly inspired by this classic game and doesn’t hide its roots. Instead of a Frisbee, the characters are throwing around a hatchet while balancing on logs. Log Jammers was successfully Kickstarted in 2018 and shipped out the physical NES cartridges. The Steam and Switch versions of the game have yet to be released. The Steam page says Q3 2019 for the anticipated launch date.

There are three game modes: Tournament, Quicky, and Online. Since this game has yet to be released, I didn’t find any online sessions to join. I do like how it has regional servers and shows their ping time so you can find the fastest one to connect to. Local multiplayer is still possible in the Quicky mode and you can play against a CPU if you’re just looking for a short match.

The tournament has several brackets that pit your selected character against the others available. As long as you keep winning, you’ll continue to climb up the tournament ladder. In total, there are forty-six Steam achievements and you’ll earn one for winning the tournament with each character. If you plan on completing a tournament which lasts roughly forty-five minutes, be prepared to complete it in one sitting as you can only pause and not save your progress midway.

Each of the characters has a different mix of three stats: speed, swole, and tech. I haven’t found much documentation or a tutorial so I’m assuming that those stand for speed, strength, and technique. Each character plays a bit differently and has various catch phrases after they win a match so it’s worth exploring them all to see which is your favorite.

A match consists of three sets which are won by whomever earns over ten points first. The goal placement varies and can earn you two or five points depending on where the axe lands within it. There are two game modes: original and cheerleader. In cheerleader mode you have to literally slice through cheerleaders laying on inner tubes before you can access the goal.

Throughout the matches, power-ups may appear including magnet, fire, ice, and oil. The magnet one is very handy as it will attract the flying axe toward your player. If you collect another power-up it will cancel out any currently activated one.

Though this title is pretty clean, it does have some issues worth noting. There is some violence, as the cheerleaders will bleed when struck. Some of the characters are zombies. The Mayo character throws up every time you score against him.

Visually, Log Jammers has a retro look and feel to it. The NES screenshots look pretty good, but not as detailed as the PC ones. The characters are nicely animated and each of the levels are unique with different types of courts filled with water, mud, lava, and even mayonnaise. There is no voice acting to speak of, but there’s a good variety in background music. None of it’s memorable though.