It solely feels proper to name the bikes in Steel Rats ‘choppers’, contemplating that their entrance wheels are additionally saw-blades, ultimate for grinding by robots, letting gamers climb vertical partitions and even adhere to ceilings. Tate Multimedia’s offbeat vehicular platformer is sort of able to roll out, and launches on November seventh.
I performed a little bit of Steel Rats earlier this 12 months at Rezzed. While I used to be solely simply getting a deal with on its controls by the top of my demo run, it felt good. It borrows some bits from the likes of Excite Bike and Trials, however assembles them into one thing recent. Below, a developer diary with a little bit of game footage – ensure you activate subtitles should you don’t converse Polish.
Set in a bizarre retro-futuristic 1940s, there’s a robotic rebellion occurring and the one dudes (and dudettes) dangerous sufficient to avoid wasting America are the Steel Rats, a high-tech biker gang. Your gang double as further lives and pressure you to regulate methods after a loss, as every has their very own stats and particular skills. While within the demo I discovered most success with the heavier, extra instantly offensive bikers, I noticed a number of potential in a single fragile, agile character with a grappling hook able to dragging giant robots off their toes as you drive previous. There’s additionally weapons, however they’ve restricted ammo pickups.
Tate Multimedia have some previous expertise with physics-driven bike games (the so-so Urban Trials sequence), however they wished to do one thing totally different with that skill-set with Steel Rats. The finish result’s a mission-based platformer with puzzles and fight, but additionally one the place you’ll wish to be double back-flipping off each ramp as a result of it’s enjoyable. Unlike most Trials-type games, Steel Rats lets you swap lanes, giving it some further depth (in essentially the most literal Z-axis sense) to its fight, letting you spin round and drive circles round larger robots, or simply by smaller ones.
The ranges are a bit extra convoluted than a Trials game, too, with keys, doorways, areas requiring backtracking and a number of targets to finish. I’m to see how shortly I find yourself wrapping my head round its barely offbeat controls and heavy bike dealing with, or whether or not I simply find yourself crashing and burning. At least it’s only some weeks away now.
Steel Rats launches on November seventh. You can discover it here on Steam and on its official page here.
