Splatoon goes skateboarding in Surgeon Sim dev's Decksplash

Splatoon is perhaps the most pleasant surprise from Nintendo in years, a charming and inventive multiplayer shooter (of all things!). Squidkids slip and swim around levels, gushing ink to splat each other and win by painting levels their team's colour, and it's all just smashing. Obviously, it's not coming to PC. But, er, Decksplash [official site] is.

Surgeon Simulator developers Bossa Studios yesterday announced Decksplash, a splatfest of their own. It's a third-person splatter where players paint levels by pulling wikkid sikk skateboard tricks, which seems a curious and charmless combination of ideas. Hmm! Observe:

Decksplash is a 3v3 multiplayer splatfest about trying to cover a skatepark in your team's colours. Doing tricks and combos charges your board up for megasplats and handy powers, and... Splatoon meets Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, yeah? It looks like it could be fun to play but to look at it utterly lacks the charm and cool of either game.

Oh my, it is so very uncool! Splatoon's squidkids wear natty threads with a bold style. THPS has that quaint xXxtremeness. Decksplash has ugly skateboards with baffling designs. These include an ice lolly, a hot dog, a caveman with his bottom showing on the flipside, and a cop wearing stockings and suspenders. They look like cheeky cutouts one might find crumbling at the end of a pier in a failing English seaside resort in 1992. Is this the work of dads with delusions of coolness? Is this the ongoing daddification of video games? Or I can see these skateboard designs as aprons worn at the barbecue grill by a wacky sitcom character. You know, the sort of people who'd describe themselves as "a bit mad". God, maybe it's an uncle. Classic uncle looks.

All of which is to say that Decksplash will hit Steam Early Access this spring.