Games built around comedy are few and far between. Although there was an era on PC where Monty Python games flowed like fine wine and adventure titles were primarily build on comedic material, the gaming industry has gotten progressively more serious as the audience has gotten progressively larger. Enter Max Gentlemen (Free) — a game that will make pretty much anyone smile, but lacks a solid gameplay foundation.

The primary goal of Max Gentlemen is to make you laugh — even the name is a take on…well…certain internet ads. Jokes like “your family tree is a shrub!" are peppered throughout, and the developers really nail the old timey theme. Your main goal is to stack as many hats as you can on your head, to become the most gentlemanly person possible. The way you do this is simple — through a runner-like loop that involves stealing hats off stage coaches, and by being rowdy at a bar.

The former mode is called “Dodgey," and sees you scrolling from left to right on a vehicular holiday, starting off with a solitary hat. To gain more, you’ll have to tap the screen to “flip" the hat up into the air, and grab others that are at the top of coaches passing by. To add a bit of tension to the proceedings, you’ll be dodging a series of birds along the way as your hat tower gets larger and larger.

To further complicate things, wherever you tap on the screen decides what hat “jumps". In other words, you can choose to flip a hat from the top row, middle row, or bottom row — every hat from the desired point upwards will flip. You’ll have to do this when birds appear at the bottom of a particularly large pile. It’s fun for a short while, but quickly gets repetitive as almost all of the birds look the same, with minor deviations in tow.

One of the oddest things about the controls is the lack of precision. While you’re moving down or up the screen to select a certain hat to flip, the game doesn’t instantly register where your finger is located. In other words, it’s easy to miss a half-second reaction even if you were on the ball by no fault of your own. This doesn’t usually occur, but when it does, it’s frustrating.

Drinky is the other minigame, and closely resembles Root Beer Tapper. You’ll move from left to right here, picking up beers, which add to your hat count. It’s essentially the same as you’re still tapping to fling hats and dodging enemies, but you’re in a funnier locale, and it’s easier to see what’s going on. The same iffy controls plague this mode though, and in essence, it’s Dodgey all over again.

If you’re bored you can opt for local multiplayer for both modes, but Drinky is the only actual fun one because it offers simultaneously play for the entire duration. Dodgey instead forces players to take turns collecting hats, which gets dull very quickly. At the very least Drinky involves a more competitive element, as you’re attempting to grab beers before your friend does. This only further highlights how much worse Dodgey really is.

The game is currently free, but you’ll have the option to purchase some IAP offerings. These are all aesthetic in nature, consisting of new characters, hats, and level skins. Again, the entire game is just playing Dodgey and Drinky over and over, occasionally with a local friend.

It’s very easy to become enamored with Max Gentlemen from the get go. The first time you see the rippled main character rip off his shirt and magically produce beers you can’t help but let out a few laughs. But when it comes time to actually get down it and play the game for extended periods of time, it doesn’t really hold up as well as it should. While the actual score-attack-centric games are decent enough, I don’t see anyone really playing this months, or even weeks down the line.