Roaming through the indie booth, I found three games from Surprise Attack that I first teased about prior to PAX South (Screencheat, Super Mutant Alien Assault, and Western Press).
I was able to chat with their teams and get some hands on experience with these three titles.
Screencheat
I really liked this game a lot. Think Goldeneye on Nintendo64, four players on one screen. Now, with any four players on one screen the anxiety of cheaters staring at your screen exists. If you have any experience with Goldeneye you’ll remember yelling don’t look at my screen ya cheat. Now throw that out the window because this is the point of Screencheat. Every player is invisible and you’ll need to look at everyones screen to figure out where they are. The only clue you have is the lingering smoke trail from their weapon and their position screen. Did they shoot and run? Are they standing right next to you sneakily? That’s what makes this title so much fun. There are currently 10-12 levels as well as a variety of fun weaponry some fun ones include a car engine, and firing a medieval mace out of a gun. There is local multiplayer (2-8 players) as well as online multiplayer. Screencheat will be available later this year and will be on on the PS4 and Xbox One as well as PC. This is a game I highly recommend checking out.
Super Mutant Alien Assault
This game has a unique pixel art vibe to it. It’s an arcade platform shooter. Players start off controlling a Janitor robot who defends a spaceship carrying the last surviving humans from a mutant alien assault. This game can be brutal, I started the demo off on Epic mode by accident and got my ass handed to me. I then restarted and saw how it eased into it. This is a game you can play single player or two player co-op. It’s a lot more fun co-op as you both can watch each others back. The enemies are relentless while you carry out your objectives. I had to snag a battery from one side of the level to carry it to the other side to power a generator and my buddy got my back the whole way otherwise it would have been a frantic run. Each level is randomized so you never know what you’re going to get but you’ll need to collect weapons, health machines and carry out objectives and slaughtering enemies to preserve the human race. Super Mutant Alien Assault will be out on PC, Xbox One and PS4, later this year.
Western Press
The graphics in Western Press are great, its definitely a retro looking western dueling game. It first reminded me of Westerado: Double Barreled . Have you played Yoshi Island for SNES? Remember the mini Balloon throwing mini game where you have to hit all the buttons in the right order in order to toss the balloon? Well this game has that same concept except its a duel. You have roughly 12 circles on the left side of the screen stacked vertically and and on the right side of the screen. Once the timer hits you have to execute the button sequence in the right order going down otherwise if you miss a button or hit the wrong one you get a time delay thus putting you in jeopardy of getting shot. This is really a fun 1v1 dueling game, it would also make a great party game. It’s due to release on PC/Mac in Q1 of 2016.
