GRTV: The Showdown Effect

After working for three years on the highly successful {Magicka}, the folks at Arrowhead Studios felt an urge to work on something radically different and something with a shorter development cycle. Enter {The Showdown Effect}. A 2D deathmatch of sorts that finds it inspiration from Hong Kong movies, The Matrix, anime and Smash Bros.

It's a humorous, slightly chaotic and very imaginative take on the 2D death match genre, that has a lot of promising ideas in it. Players will be able to interact with the environment, scaring pidgeons, throwing down garbage cans, and such, while shooting, dodging and creating bubbles where time is slowed down as they try and take out their opponent. Arrowhead Game Studios confirmed that there will be a couple of game modes, including a signature one they are keeping under wraps for now. Up to eight players will be able to take part in the fun on PC and Mac with no plans for console ports at this point.

This quote from the press release really describes the game in a nutshell: "{The Showdown Effect} is all about impaling your friend with nearby broomstick and dropping a "Stick around"-taunt as you jetpack heroically off to the next enemy."

There are hundreds of weapons to use and there is character progression and unlocks as you'd expect from any online game these days.

Arrowhead Game Studios have switch engines and are now using Bitsquid for all their games in production (currently 4 titles), it's a fairly comfortable move as the guys coding Bitsquid are sitting on the floor above Arrowhead's new Stockholm offices where another developer, Fatshark ({Hamilton's Great Adventure}, {War of the Roses}, {Krater}) also reside.

Check out the first screens from the game below and this interview with Arrowhead's Johan Pilestedt and Emil Englund, over at the new Arrowhead offices in Stockholm where they go on at length about what inspired the concept.