Killer Queen Black brings the cult barcade hit to PC
Colony collapse syndrome solved
PC games are lurking everywhere this E3, even in Nintendo's showcase. Killer Queen has apparently been racking up plenty of fans in the indie arcade/gaming bar scene, but it's never been available elsewhere until now. Early next year (once all the real bees have gone away), it's hitting PC as Killer Queen Black, and features fully online 4v4 multiplayer.
Killer Queen is mechanically quite interesting. The majority of each team is made up of harmless, flightless drones, with one player on each side playing as the queen. While drones respawn endlessly, queens have limited lives, and if either team runs out of queens, they lose. However, there are other objectives that can secure victory for your team, and the drones carry those out. They can also complete them more efficiently if the queens claim the upgrade gates around the map, allowing drones to equip themselves with melee and ranged weaponry, or even wings.
The 'Black' part of the title is more than just a cool-looking extra. One of developer Liquid Bit's plans for the game is to have the world's best online team wear a unique black sprite-set, setting them apart from the crowd. You kill the current Killer Queen royalty, and you'll be dynamite with a laser beam. Either that or you'll become the new visibly reigning champs, with Liquid Bit planning to rebroadcast the most fierce title matches to keep people interested in shooting for the crown.
The game is due out early the start of next year, but the impatient do at least have the option of picking up the arcade cabinet edition at the low, low price of $12,995. Yes, I had to make sure that was the right number of digits too. At least it supports a whole ten players - two more than the home version - that's something, at least... Right?
Killer Queen Black is coming to Steam this winter.