Crawl Turns Gabe Newell Into The Enemy Boss From Hell
That's not a knife
There's the Mona Lisa and there's the Venus de Milo, and then there's this beauty. The kindly Australians of indie outfit Powerhoof have turned Valve's very own high priest Gabe Newell into an enemy boss for their asymmetrical dungeon crawler Crawl [official site]. Take a look at this thing, in all the technicolour glory of an animated gif.
"I've been wanting to animate this for soooo long," developer Barney Cumming typed typingly in a recent blog post.
According to Cumming, there was a bit of confusion over whether Gaben Boss was in fact an April Fools one-off. It ain't. He's coming to the game's next update, says Cumming: "He's all implemented, just needs final playtesting/tweaks."
In fact, Powerhoof has a track record for taking comedy seriously. Last year they added in tax agents to Crawl, a tongue-firmly-in-cheek reference to the tedious bureaucratic red tape that made them delay the game's release last year.
"The consistent tone is something I've been very serious about for Crawl, and with the silly joke gods I was able to hide them all behind special codes, making it so you can have silly ones but you have to specifically 'opt in' or else the tone is unbroken which I think is ideal," Cumming explained. "I'll have a think and see if there is some equivalent for the gag statue monsters."
Crawl is out on Steam Early Access right now for £6.99. In it, up to five players take turns playing as the hero while the rest controls the baddies.