Shoot someone and they die. But you have limited ammo. But you can pick up other people's arrows if they miss. But if you hit someone and they dodge through it, they get the arrow instead. But...
Singleplayer games are often judged on how well they're able to accomplish something like the above: taking a simple base concept and constantly twisting it to throw players off guard while still keeping the same mechanical core intact. Multiplayer games, though, are an entirely different beast- learning how to play one is almost always getting the rules explained to you, whether it be through a heavy handed tutorial or just from one of your friends. The reasoning for this is apparent, as intuitive teaching isn't really possible without some kind of linear progression, and when you can't predict the "difficulty" (skill level) of your "obstacles" (other players), there's really nothing you can do. That is, unless you're playing with a group of people who also have no prior experience with the game, which was exactly my situation with Towerfall, and it was a blast! Slowly picking up on all of the little quirks in the platforming mechanics and immediately experimenting with them in the next round, laughing or gloating during the instant replay after a crazy finish, and that one moment, at match point, where the last two survivors are using all of the tricks they've learned to to try and outwit each other. Fittingly, it's reminiscent of discovering what Jigglypuff's down-B did or that Luigi's taunt could deal damage back in the day, on a much more limited scale. There's not really any worthwhile singleplayer content, but that only speaks to how lean it is- each and every part of Towerfall is both intuitive and highly conducive towards the controlled chaos that makes for a great party game. Considering you can disable anything you might find to be BS, like the auto-handicap that happens when someone lags too far behind in score, there's a temptation to call this game perfect... but I'm able to resist it. My crusade against loading screen tips continues to grow, as too much stuff is revealed to you via popups in between rounds, and it does feel like it's missing a lot in terms of personality, which makes you realize how much heavy lifting Celeste's soundtrack would end up doing. All the stages' individual mechanics are well designed, and rotating between several layouts rather than sticking with a static one is particularly clever, but a lot of them don't really fit the theming of each individual level and so it's kind of hard to remember which one contains which gimmicks. But can you call them flaws if they don't dent your enjoyment? Loaded my Switch up with party games for a meetup with college friends and we had so much fun with this one that we didn't get to any of the others, which just about says it all. With the Smash Bros. series treading water and only feeling more and more bloated since Melee, this just might be the new go-to.