Tonight We Riot
Pixel Pushers Union 512
PC / Nintendo Switch £11.39

I HAVE to admit, I have a soft spot for those retro games which are all the rage right now.

That magical golden age of consoles through the 1980s and 1990s, with successive leaps from 8-bit to 16-bit and beyond, make it hard for me to be objective and honestly, I’d be lying if I said my views on Tonight We Riot, developed by Pixel Pushers Union 512, aren’t coloured by a deep sense of personal nostalgia.

If chip music and pixel art really aren’t your thing and can’t whisk you away to a warm and fuzzy place, this might not be for you.

That said, playing a role in a worker’s revolution and literally petrol bombing a capitalist state may see you instantly adding this one to your wish list. It’s politically reductive and provocative, yes. But it’s also tongue-in-cheeck and cathartic.

As a side-scrolling brawler, it doesn’t exactly break new ground — and, at £11.39 on Steam, it’s arguably not that cheap for what it is. Yet, it’s worth mentioning that Pixel Pushers Union 512 is a worker’s co-operative, dedicated to championing socialist ideals.

The developers, inspired by the Wobblies and the IWW’s unofficial strikes, are actively challenging the industry and its neoliberal agenda. This results in some creative design decisions.

For starters, although you only control one character at a time, it’s your crowd of klaxon-blaring comrades that are important. The individual doesn’t matter. It’s all about the collective will and the combined power of the oppressed.  

Tonight We Riot is not a mind-blowing game. It’s fun and has a fantastic soundtrack, but it’s short and lacks some replayability value, despite a slew of in-game collectibles for completionists.

On the other hand, it does achieve something quite extraordinary. Here is a title unlike any other. It’s raw, it’s angry as hell, and it’s raising a banner. This may well be the first socialist video game ever made, and for that reason alone, it belongs in your library.