Wreckateer
One of the many pleasures of stalking the show floor at E3 was bumping into some of the smaller developers. Two such encounters were with Dave Lang of Iron Galaxy whose new game Wreckateer was featured in the Xbox keynote and is coming later this year, and Tequila Works CEO Raúl Rubio Munárriz whose game Deadlight is also due out soon.
Both these titles are slated to be part of the Xbox 360′s Summer of Arcade program, and I think families should look forward to both of them — although for very different reasons.
Firstly, Wreckateer (as you can see in the interview below) is a combination of Angry Birds, Burnout and Boom Blox. That’s quite a trio of games to reference for any developer. Iron Galaxy has taken those three seeds and added Kinect controls. The result is a super-simple and super-destructive tower attack game.
Players use their bodies to launch a variety of different bombs at increasingly fortified castles. The real genius here is being able to use gestures to apply after-touch, and in some cases literally fly the bomb, to ensure it stays on target. Having played this quite a bit at E3 I can’t wait to see how my kids get on with it. It could well replace Fruit Ninja and Leedmees as our go-to game on the 360 Kinect controller.
Secondly, Deadlight is less of an obvious choice for families. While you will need to be older to enjoy this, I really like the way the game doesn’t let the player shoot their way to safety. In fact there is a penalty of using any weapon or firearm — not least because you attract the attention of more zombie attackers.
Add to this the game’s inspiration of Flashback, Another World and Prince of Persia and you have the making of a classic game that will appeal to parents who remember those originals. The game is described as a zombie puzzle game, which again gets my 16-bit juices flowing as I remember all those mind-bending platform puzzles from my favorite games of days gone by.
With these two titles, and the other Summer of Arcade games, there is plenty to look forward to as the weather improves and the schools break up for the holidays. The full Summer of Arcade line-up is as follows:
- 07/18/2012 Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater HD 1200 MS Points
- 07/25/2012 Wreckateer 800 MS Points
- 08/01/2012 Deadlight 1200 MS Points
- 08/08/2012 Hybrid 1200 MS Points
- 08/15/2012 Dust: An Elysian Tail 1200 MS Points
You can stock up on points from Amazon from $19.99.
