Jetpack Squad Is A New Shooter From Intrusion 2 Dev

Intrusion 2 [official site] is one of the best games. It's a 2D side-scrolling shooter with physics-driven animation and a commitment to expansively silly action. So, for example, one of its bosses is a helicopter with arms. It punches at you then pumps its fist when it wins. When you destroy its helicopter blades, it uses its arms to drag itself towards you along the ground. And when you destroy the rest of it, you go sliding down a mountain by using its remains as a snowboard. Then you get given a mech suit with a sword and shotgun.

Now its designer is making a new game called Jetpack Squad [official site] and the GIFs of its in-development form are enough to suggest it's even more physicsy, expansive and silly. There are six of those GIFs below.

Who even needs words to explain to appeal of this.

Look at the way the robot legs scamper away when its head has been destroyed.

The new game is being designed and programmed by Intrusion 2's Alexey Abramenko, but with art from Aleks Nikonov. They're using the Unity engine, so it should be a little smoother than Intrusion 2 and a Windows, Mac and Linux release is planned.

The game is called Jetpack Squad because you have a jetpack, and because you control a squad of characters with different abilities. Those characters are swapped in and out automatically in the midst of the action when you execute different kinds of attack. It's subject to change, but the concept is that "you need to choose 3 characters before the level starts, each with their attack/weapon and passive effects, and you can collect new characters along the way."

Also I guess it has a kind of robot scorpion bus.

And swarms of things.

No word of a release date yet, but the team will be at GDC. I will track them down.