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Vehicular puzzler Mugsters looks a little like Blast Corps

The drive to survive

Aliens have invaded - what's your your first weapon of choice? Laser gun? Nukes? Mugsters posits that an ice-cream truck will do the job. It's a vehicular action-puzzler by solo indie dev Reinkout and published by Team 17. I've been following development of this one ever since I saw some animated GIFs of it on the developer's Twitter feed. Why? Because it looks like N64 classic Blast Corps mashed up with a little Grand Theft Auto and maybe a dash of Body Harvest (for anyone that remembers that), so is entirely my jam. It's also out today.

It's hard not to make comparisons to Blast Corps, given the launch trailer below. You've got a world-ending threat to stop, and a mismatched collection of vehicles (some more practical than others) to do it with across a series of self-contained missions. Anything with an engine can crash through wooden barriers, but you'll need heavier machinery to deal with sturdier problems, and ideally something armed (or a combine harvester) to deal with the aliens themselves. On foot, you're mostly defenceless, although you can still pick up and throw explosive barrels.

Watch on YouTube

Cars are just the simplest way of getting from A to B or smashing up things. There's rockets, planes and heavy industrial machinery and more to play around with, although all of them look to explode in the same satisfying ball of orange firey polygons if you push them too hard. I hope to pick Mugsters up at the weekend for myself, as initial reviews from those with the Switch version seem quite positive. It even supports co-op (local-only I'm afraid), and better yet; if you play with a buddy, all the levels get remixed to require more cooperation to complete.

Mugsters is out now on Steam for £10/15/$15.

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