Furi gives you exactly one job, and it never lets you forget it: find the guardian, learn the guardian, kill the guardian. Ten times over. The Game Bakers built a 2016 action game with no filler, no grinding, no side quests, no loot. Just a stranger, a sword, a gun, and a chain of floating islands above a distant planet.
The Stranger Wakes Up With a Sword
The setup is spare. A mysterious man known only as The Stranger is held captive and tortured in a highly advanced prison, a chain of ten islands floating above a distant planet. Each island has one powerful guardian whose only purpose is to keep him from escaping.
A masked figure called The Voice sets him free, hands him a sword and a gun, and urges him to fight his way out. That is the whole premise. Furi does not waste time explaining more than it needs to, and the restraint works in its favor.
The Stranger is later referred to as Rider. The game trusts the fight to carry the story, and mostly it does.
Ten Guardians, Ten Fights
The roster is the game. Each guardian has a name, a weapon, and a combat style that forces a different rhythm out of you. The Chain is a sadistic staff-wielding jailor who tortured The Stranger. The Strap is a prisoner driven mad, armed with a laser cannon mounted on her head. The Line is a wise old man with a sword longer than his body who can manipulate time.
The Scale is a vengeful diver with twin harpoons. The Hand is a noble knight who imprisoned The Stranger in the first place. The Song is an angelic woman with twin crossbows who conceived the prison. The Burst is a sniper and master tactician. The Edge is an oar-wielding warrior who dedicated his life to fighting The Stranger. The Beat is a young woman with sonic weapons guarding the final door.
The Voice is not one of the guardians. He is the masked figure who frees The Stranger and, later, the architect who built the prison to protect the planet from him.
Parry, Shoot, Repeat
Furi is a fast-paced action game with elements of hack and slash and shoot ’em up, both twin stick and bullet hell. It consists entirely of boss fights. That is not a marketing line. There are no regular enemies between the bosses, only short walking sections that act as longer cutscenes and provide downtime between fights.
Gameplay focuses on dodging bullets, parrying attacks to regain health, attacking up close with melee or from a distance with ranged projectiles, and quick time events. This paper’s read is that the parry is the hinge the whole combat system swings on; the source only confirms that a successful parry restores health.
The arenas are small. Ten floating islands connected by shorter pathway segments, a linear closed world. That constraint is the point.
The game is played in third person and bird view, isometric. It is single player only.
A Soundtrack That Does Half the Work
The high-energy action gets a boost from an explosive soundtrack composed by electro musicians including Carpenter Brut, who created the theme for the trailer. Our view: the music does more than decorate the fights, and the game would be thinner without it.
The guardians were designed by Afro Samurai creator Takashi Okazaki. That credit matters. The character work has a specific look, and it holds up.
What Furi Is Not
Furi is not a generous game. The three possible endings depend on choices the player makes, including one secret ending, but the road to them is the same ten fights. If a guardian’s pattern does not click, you will repeat it. A lot.
That is a design decision, not an accident. The game is built around the tension of one-on-one fights against deadly adversaries, and repetition is how it teaches you. Whether that reads as discipline or as punishment depends on how much you enjoy learning a fight rather than surviving a level.
The Voice and the Prison
The story does surface, mostly through mid-fight interactions with bosses and short cutscenes at the beginning and end of fights. The rest is told during player-controlled walking sections that act as longer cutscenes. The Voice reveals that he was the architect who created the prison to protect the planet from The Stranger. He could not stand being locked inside it himself, so he freed The Stranger to escape with him and see his daughter again.
That is a real twist, and it reframes the fights you just finished. The Stranger reaches the planet’s surface and finds that his mere presence corrupts everything around him. He ventures into a structure holding an exo-suit, uses it to fly off the planet.
What Furi Gets Right and Wrong
Furi earns its 7.9. The combat is precise, the guardians are distinct, and the soundtrack is doing genuine work.
The case against it is real too. The source describes a game that consists entirely of boss fights across ten islands; our evaluation is that ten fights is a thin spine for a full game, and the walking sections between them are the weakest material here, existing mainly to give you air. That is the paper’s view, not a fact the source states.
Three things decide whether Furi is for you, and they rank in this order:
- Whether you enjoy learning a fight instead of surviving a level.
- Whether a short game with no padding reads as respect for your time.
- Whether a soundtrack can carry you through a wall you have hit five times.
If the first answer is no, the other two do not matter.
How the Guardians Compare
| Guardian | Weapon | Role in the prison |
|---|---|---|
| The Chain | Staff | Sadistic jailor who tortured The Stranger |
| The Strap | Laser cannon on her head | Prisoner driven mad by imprisonment |
| The Line | Sword longer than his body | Wise old man who can manipulate time |
| The Scale | Twin harpoons | Vengeful diver |
| The Hand | — | Noble knight who imprisoned The Stranger |
| The Song | Twin crossbows | Angelic woman who conceived the prison |
| The Burst | — | Sniper and master tactician |
| The Edge | Oar | Warrior who dedicated his life to fighting The Stranger |
| The Beat | Sonic weapons | Young woman guarding the final door |
The table is the argument. Furi strips out everything that usually pads a game of this genre and bets the whole thing on whether the fights are good enough to carry it. They are.
What makes Furi worth playing now is the same thing that made it worth playing in 2016: the bet pays off. The Stranger’s prison is a chain of ten islands, and the game’s structure is the same chain. That is either the pitch or the warning, depending on the player.
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