Netflix's lady assassin movie Kate is getting an action roguelike tie-in game
Movie tie-ins are morally obligated to be pixel-style
I've been positively held hostage by the lady assassin action movie trend—having been in the same room as my partner relentlessly devouring the likes of The Old Guard, Ava, Terminal, and Gunpowder Milkshake. No surprise then that I also got sucked into watching Kate, Netflix's new action movie starring assassin Mary Elizabeth Winstead and her teen hostage slash sidekick Miku Martineau. What is surprising—even though Netflix have shown an increasing interest in games—is that Kate is getting a tie-in action game called Kate: Collateral Damage. It's a fast-paced and arcade-y roguelike with some twin-stick style shooting coming out in October.
Kate the movie follows an assassin of the same name through a bloody revenge mission after her final contract leads to her being poisoned by a yakuza crime boss. She's got 24 hours to live, hunting him down on a Tokyo-based rampage with the help of her mouthy hostage Ani and a handful of stimulant syringes. Kate: Collateral Damage will follow along pretty literally, it sounds.
"A time bar at the top of the screen constantly marches towards your inevitable death at the hands of the deadly radioactive poison, Polonium 204," developers Ludic Studios say. "Killing enemies slows the rate at which the time bar depletes, awarding your deadly precision." You can top up your time with syringes, trade out guns and swords routinely as you use them up, and make use of Ani's support abilities.
The literal interpretation ends at the roguelike part, as I'm sure you won't be surprised to hear that Kate doesn't end with her doing it all over again with a damage +10% buff. In Collateral Damage, Ludic Studios say that you'll unlock permanent upgrades between runs and temporary perks between levels within a run.
Ludic Studios do look to have the chops to make good on a Kate adaptation. They've already done the arcade action shooter thing with their 2018 game Akane. That one's set 100 years from now in the Tokyo of 2121 in which you "take out as many yakuza as possible, slashing and shooting in a one-hit-one-kill fight to the death."
Yup, that sure is just about the same thing. The Steam user review hivemind has bestowed Akane an overall "overwhelmingly positive" from more than 1,500 reviews. Sounds promising, I'd say, to let Ludic go on and do more of what they're good at.
Kate: Collateral Damage is launching over on Steam on October 22.