I was lucky enough to get to spend a little bit of time with this upcoming PSN release at GDC this year, and here we are, almost at release time! The guys from Hothead Games were very kind and showed me how this game worked; even gave me a little hands on time, as well.
Swarm features little blue protaginists, being controlled at up to 50 at a time. The game consists of getting your little guys from one spot to the next, in a fun platformer which actually rewards you for killing many of the poor little guys as possible, while still getting at least one through the level. These are the folks that worked on the Death Spank games, so you know it’s gonna be hilarious.
This was by far the “funnest” game I got to play, not least for the joy of killing bunch of blue, chubby, not-too-smart Swarmites. There are even medals for doing so – Death Medals and even Mega Death Medals and the like. it controls like a platformer, except your avatar is this loosely connected bunch of little blue dudes that don’t QUITE follow your every direction. There’s joy in the messiness, however, as you jump chasms at just the right time, not to get them all across, but to lose as many as possible to the depths below because you see a score multiplier on the other side which gets you MORE points the LESS Swarmites you bring to it. Add to this a hellish landscape and plenty of ways to kill these little guys, and you’ve got a potential hit on your hands.
And today, I see what Joel DeYoung had to say over at the Playstation Blog:
We’re super excited that Swarm is finally about to be released on PlayStation Network. The genesis of the original idea for the game stretches all the way back to 2006, shortly after we started Hothead. There was an indie video game developer contest we wanted to enter, so we brainstormed a ton of ideas on what to submit. Dr. Mike Hayward, Hothead’s resident Ph.D., brought forward a concept based on his doctoral research in artificial life. He called it Swarm and it had plenty of science cred. We thought this was our contest winner, so we came up with a cute adorable character to go with his tech, the swarmite, and got to work on a prototype.
Then I saw this video, which shows all of the action in all its glory:
And I got all excited again. Be prepared to download this baby when it comes to the Playstation Store very soon.
(images courtesy Playstation Blog)
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