Developer: Jupiter Corporation
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Release Date: May 26, 2023
I am in decent shape, and Ring Fit Adventure for the Nintendo Switch is one of the reasons why. When Spike Chunsoft offered me the opportunity to try out their new exercise title for the Nintendo Switch at GDC 2023, Fitness Circuit, I could not say no.
I changed into my exercise clothing and then came back to try out the demo, which consisted of one ‘Daily Circuit’. Fitness Circuit encourages you to not play the game nonstop, but instead pick it up three times a week for 10 minutes at a time to try to get some cardio in across 45 different exercises. I found this interesting, as titles such as Ring Fit Adventure or even the PlayStation VR’s VR Boxing almost encourage you to make those titles a daily part of your routine.
For my demo Daily Circuit, I was presented with three different tiers of difficulty: Easy, Standard, and Challenging. Each tier appears to only increase the number of ‘sets’ that you do for the full circuit of exercises. There were also four exercises shown that seemed to be consistent for each tier: 1) Butt-Kick, 2) Squat, 3) Up Straight, and 4) Bent-Over Row. You can customize your character’s appearance, though I could not do that during the demo. There is also a four-player online multiplayer mode, which I was unfortunately unable to try out.
After gripping a Joy-Con controller in each hand, I was given a brief demo of an exercise in-game before I had to attempt to replicate it in sync with the game. The Butt-Kick and Squat exercises went fairly well, and I could feel my muscles definitely starting to work out while I was doing them. Those were also fairly straight forward exercises that I caught onto almost immediately. The Up Straight was a bit frustrating, however. After the demo, I did not realize that I was supposed to twist my hands as I was raising them into the air, so despite me being able to keep the proper pace, I ended up failing that exercise the first time I attempted it because I did not know quite what to do and how to do it. The Bent-Over Row was definitely the toughest exercise to do, but I managed to complete that fairly well. And then…It was time to do it all over again after a short rest! I will be honest: by the end of my 9 minute, 35 second workout, I was sweating. I burned a bunch of calories, and I felt like I had done a genuine cardio workout.
The Daily Circuit that I did definitely worked out all sorts of muscles. I felt like my lower back, my arms, my legs, and my chest and abdominal muscles were all being worked out at different times. While I am used to utilizing the Ring-Con for resistance training and the Leg Strap to ensure that my kicks are high enough, I felt like I was still getting a worthwhile at-home workout without them. Fitness Circuit definitely could tell if I was not trying hard enough to exercise – especially when I was doing the Squats or Bent-Over Row.
Ultimately, there were only two things that I was disappointed about with my demo of Fitness Circuit. First, I wish the exercise demo more carefully demonstrated the required Joy-Con hand motions for each exercise. I didn’t particularly like having to almost stop midway through the Up Straight exercise to try to figure out how to properly do it, and the demo before the exercise started definitely did not do a good enough job for it. I caught up fairly quickly after I failed it the first time, but it definitely would have been a lot smoother for me to have a more detailed demo. Second, I did miss the ability to have the IR sensor in the Joy-Con tell me my heartrate. It is a silly little thing, maybe, but I liked that aspect of Ring Fit Adventure so I could tell myself “hey, you’re working out hard!”, even though I am already sweating hard.
Fitness Circuit is ultimately an exercise game: you will get out of it what you put into it. If you want to sweat and burn calories and do some serious cardio, my brief time with the demo showed me that you can definitely do that. If the full game is anything like the demo I did, I would definitely try integrating it into my daily workout as an exercise supplement!
Do you use exercise games as a way to help you work out? Would you want to pick up Fitness Circuit to help you with your exercise routine?
Let us know in the comments below!
