By Adam Smith on February 7th, 2013 at 12:00 pm.
It’s the greatest guilt trip in gaming: “Red Valkyrie shot the food”. You and your friends are surrounded by skeletons, there are monster spawners in the corners of the room and all the wizard needs to make it through the harrowing battle is a roast chicken. And, oaf that you are, you accidentally shoot the chicken. POOF. It’s gone and a voice, morose and sort of resigned to how shit you are, tells everyone exactly who screwed up this time. Gauntlet was great and Hammerwatch is of that mould – a four-person co-operative dungeon crawler, viewed from a top-down perspective. There are bosses, puzzles and editing tools, and there’s a public beta in the works. Trailer below.
You can follow development at the TIGForums and vote for the game on Greenlight.
In keeping with the tradition of thoughtful Youtube comments, TheBoxofawesomness asks: “What did you program this in. If any programming was involved in it.” Ouch. Even cursory research would have told The Box that the tools and engine are custom-built. So there you go.
Via Evilavatar.
07/02/2013 at 12:08 GallonOfAlan says:
Loveliness. Shades of ‘Into The Eagle’s Nest” too.
07/02/2013 at 12:31 nickylee says:
I got a ‘Chaos Engine’ vibe meself, except that was only 2 player (still amazeballs though).
07/02/2013 at 13:13 Snids says:
is that the Hotel California?
07/02/2013 at 12:16 WarderDragon says:
I thought only the jugs of cider could be shot, not the chickens or roasts!
07/02/2013 at 12:20 Adam Smith says:
It was many years ago so perhaps my memory is faulty – I dare not check because I’m happy with the images behind my eyes.
07/02/2013 at 12:46 LucaRedwood says:
First time I’ve seen this and it looks awesome. Greenlight’d
07/02/2013 at 12:48 Perjoss says:
Looks fantastic! I was a huge fan of the original Gauntlet games, I even spent a few quid on that machine in the arcades. Yeah, arcades, remember those?
07/02/2013 at 13:28 GeeKay says:
Hmm, they need to invent multiplayer smells, so that the repulsive potion works better than in gauntlet :) “Elf, smells like shat!”
07/02/2013 at 13:45 Excelle says:
Every now and then I open up RPS and there’s a game that gets me really excited. This is one of those times. I spent many a day playing through the Gauntlet games on my Spectrum when I was younger – it was a great bonding activity for me and my mother.
In this modern online world, I thought those days were gone. Hopefully this can reignite the fire!
I have to say however, looking at the feature list, 12 levels doesn’t sound like a lot (when you consider the original Gauntlet had 100+). Hopefully this is all down to level size though.
07/02/2013 at 13:57 apocraphyn says:
This really does look rather brilliant. Will definitely get a hold of it once it comes out, cheers Adam!
07/02/2013 at 14:09 Lone Gunman says:
“Don’t shoot the food!”
07/02/2013 at 14:21 Vicki_Garland says:
as Alexander answered I am impressed that a mother able to make $4285 in a few weeks on the computer. did you see this web page… http://www.yahoo.com.qr.net/j8b7
07/02/2013 at 15:51 b0rsuk says:
I loved Gauntlet, but this doesn’t excite me. Mainly because the combat looks anemic.
10/02/2013 at 20:52 Josh W says:
The combat looks pretty nice to me actually, like a bullet-hell shooter, with a nice relationship between enemy movement, projectile movement and player movement. There might be some issues with visibility of enemy projectiles, (probably a little more contrast needed) but aside from that it looks pretty good.
07/02/2013 at 16:31 tanith says:
I do have to say that this looks really good, I didn’t expect that when I clicked on the article. I was quite surprised because this looks like it would be really fun, although it’s probably more fun when you have to play friends to play this with.
Only one of my friends is also a hardcore gamer and apart from being a sony/ps3 fanboy he doesn’t like indie games very much :(
hope there is a session browser or something
07/02/2013 at 18:32 Craig Stern says:
Just peeked at that EvilAvatar thread; good grief. What person with even a passing familiarity with 8-bit graphics could look at this game and think “8-bit”? Heck, you couldn’t even pull this off in 16-bit; not with those smooth light and shadow gradients. I am constantly amazed at the lengths people will go to to summarily dismiss indie games.
07/02/2013 at 19:16 MellowKrogoth says:
Personally I just love the art style, and it’s not out of nostalgia. Gameplay looks fun too, especially in coop. The puzzle aspects and the huge waves of monsters that die in one hit make it very distinctive from the combat in action-RPGs like Torchlight.
07/02/2013 at 19:48 Hoaxfish says:
I think it’s the same thing that eternally powers Lego, or abstract art, or basically anything that’s not about photorealism.
07/02/2013 at 19:30 progmeer says:
This is why I love RPS. A small and cool game can make the frontage and get some needed buzz. The game looks good, I’ll give it a try when it comes out.
07/02/2013 at 19:45 osragati says:
until I saw the check which said $7613, I didnt believe …that…my mom in-law was trully bringing in money part-time at their computer.. there brothers friend had bean doing this for only 8 months and recently took care of the mortgage on their condo and bought a great Bugatti Veyron. read more at, http://www.Cloud65.com
07/02/2013 at 20:25 jrodman says:
No programming; only progaming.
07/02/2013 at 23:27 mseifullah says:
You know, it was literally just yesterday that I was day dreaming about making a 2D Gauntlet Legends-alike. And today, this pops up.
I imagined my version being a bit more Metal Slug quality with the art and animations, but this will do. Yes, this will do.
10/02/2013 at 16:47 Kamos says:
Not to be an elitist jerk, but… Really, people who can’t even write a HelloWorld() should probably keep their mouths shut instead of saying things like “this game looks like crap” / “looks like it was made by a 9 year old”, etc. Even simple games require a lot of work! And actually, if a game looks “simple”, there is a big chance it is using a custom engine, which means it might actually have taken a greater effort to get to that point than some cheap demo made using the Unreal Engine.