Please a giant goddess with boomerang fights in Bamerang
Or else she'll pick you up and shake you
Bamerang has the best trailer of any game this year so far. It's a local multiplayer game about tiny people battling on top of a mountain with boomerangs in order to please a giant green goddess who will shake them if they fall. It's out today.
The trailer is 53 perfect seconds:
I love the illustrations at the start that set up the dynamic. I love the echoing drum beats. I love those big hands.
There also seem to be all the elements of a strong local multiplayer game on display, too. If you reverse engineered a classic of the form, such as Nidhogg, I think you'd identify three core elements.
First, a weapon that's powerful but somewhat unpredictable, so you get near misses and unlikely strikes. That's here in those boomerangs, which arc around arenas to strike enemies behind cover and on the rebound. Ideally you want to feel good when you hit an opponent, and laugh when you get hit.
Second, the ability for players to have their leads swiftly overturned. Bamerang is won not with kills or knockouts, but by collecting golden points from around the arena. If you get hit by a boomerang, you drop a hefty chunk of your points, "making it easy for your opponents to catch up." Cue dramatic wailing - and a more level playing field despite differences in videogame skill.
Third, if your game is about players fighting one another for no particular reason, you may as well have some fun with it. Nidhogg has you racing to be eaten by a giant worm; Bamerang has you pleasing a giant goddess seen only via her hands. If you fall off the platform you're fighting upon, she picks you up again and shakes a bunch of points out of your pockets as punishment. Because why not.
Although it has no native online multiplayer, it does support Steam's Remote Play feature that lets you play local multiplayer games over the internet. If that sounds like your thing, check out Bamerang on Steam here.