An addictive puzzle come

racing/platform/beat-em up hybrid?

by AXIS of Reality

© 2010 Alex Baldwin

E3 is a crazy experience. Running between appointments, trying to gleam solid information from 15 minute developer-controlled demos of unreleased games while trying to sort fact from fiction in the carefully-worded press releases and presentations.

So it’s very nice when I can just wander into a studio, have a sit down and play through an upcoming game without the terrified eyes of PR watchdogs making sure I’m ‘playing it right’.

• Raskulls Game Footage Trailer

This is what I was lucky enough to experience for local Aussie developer Halfbrick’s promising new Xbox Live Arcade game ‘Raskulls’, a studio that has recently been making some waves well beyond what their modest size would suggest.

If you’re shaking your head around trying to work out where you’ve heard that name before, it may be due to the enormous success of their iPhone / iPod Touch app ‘Fruit Ninja’ that has been gracing the Top 10 charts on iTunes since release.

Or perhaps from their numerous PSP Minis games (all original IP) such as Blast-Off, Rocket Racing, Echoes and Age of Zombies that are also finding their way to PS3 and Xbox Live Indie.

Getting back to our favourite platform, Raskulls will be the first Xbox Live Arcade game from the studio, despite being in development far longer than the others in their stable. Here’s how my visit went:

If you’re searching through Brisbane for Halfbrick, chances are you won’t find it. Even looking at their address on Google Street View will leave you scratching your head.

The only hint of their existence is a piece of paper printed with their logo stuck to a window in the side of a larger building. Through the portal and up the stairs is another glass door and a doorbell with the friendly sign of ‘NO HAWKERS’, along with a bike and pulled-apart PC tower blocking the entrance.

After being buzzed in and threading my way past the shiny metal heatsinks and motherboards I was greeted by the CEO Shainiel Deo, whom I had met before on other occasions, and the marketing manager Phil Larsen.

Both surprisingly young for a completely independent but successful and sizeable self-started studio, but both very friendly and happy to take me through to the large ‘game room’, for lack of a better term.

A plasma sat alone against the wall surrounded by numerous consoles and controllers of every type littering the floor, including 3 sets of the Donkey Konga bongo drums. Clearly these guys take their bongo skills very seriously.

After bringing out one of the 360 debug units, it decided sound was far too much of a struggle to produce and was quickly taken away and replaced with another debug unit – clearly the old 360 hardware issues weren’t limited to consumer machines.

Second time lucky, and we were quickly up and running with the singleplayer campaign.

A brief cutscene introduced me to the skeletal costumed ‘Raskulls’ of the title, thankfully not voiced but with a healthy dose of humour and appealing cartoon visuals heavy on rounded shapes and thick outlines.

But onto the actual gameplay. If you took Super Smash Bros and married it to Tetris, before taking the offspring and letting it get jiggy with Mr Driller while cheating on him with a racing game, the end result would be….well…a very complicated and poorly formulated analogy but also quite possibly Raskulls.

This is a racing / puzzle / platform / beat-em-up all mashed together into a deliciously different hybrid game.

It all takes place in 2D, blocky side-scrolling levels populated with what appear to be escaped Tetris bricks. That’s right; your enemies aren’t deformed animals with soft, stompable heads – they’re blocks. Inanimate, solid blocks. Wild.

Luckily, along with the usual running and jumping you’re granted the ability to destroy any blocks adjacent to you along with any other touching of the same colour.

There’s always the danger of being crushed during this however, as any unsupported blocks above ones you’re destroyed are all too happy to fall down and deal a quick, crushing death. This would be all well and dandy if it wasn’t for the time limits.

Of the approximately ten different modes using this simple concept, many incorporate a tight time limit for completion in reaching the checkered wall at the end.

Desperation can prompt many mistakes when pixel-perfect jumping is combined with madly digging through blocks able to flatten you should you hesitate or leave something unsupported over your head.

A nitro meter charged by collecting glowing orange lights can help when you’re lacking the time necessary to ensure you have followed proper safety procedure and structural integrity in your tunnelling duties.

Powerups can also help in times of need, allowing wider and more extreme block destruction or other abilities such as invisibility. But why would you need that in a singleplayer game of approximately 60 levels, I hear you ask?

Why, because the highlight of Raskulls would have to be its multiplayer. And what a multiplayer it is, harkening back to the days when 4 people could gather around a TV and stare intently at their quarter of the screen (with the occasional subtle glances at the others).

That’s right, Raskulls support 4 players on the same 360; a feature sorely missing from most games today.

Operating as a side-scrolling race, you’re forced to run and tunnel with mad intensity, pushing and shoving against your opponents while weighing the benefits of collecting a powerup slightly out of the optimal route against the time wasted. It’s a chaotic experience that demands your full focus lest someone slip ahead or bring down a ton of bricks on your character.

Map routes can follow scroll and twist in any direction, weaving pathways off any side of the screen that rewards memorising the turns but never leads the player in the wrong direction. I had a blast competing against Shainiel and Phil, as well as another Halfbrickian all too happy to sit down to a game.

The numerous character costumes help differentiate between the characters (my favourites being the dragon and ninja costumes), and the 16 multiplayer maps are very generous when paired with the extensive singleplayer for a Live Arcade game. This could very easily become a multiplayer favourite on Live and against your friends in the same room.

One of the other benefits of its multiplayer simplicity is getting your inexperienced friends involved.

You don’t need to learn difficult controls or be put at a disadvantage for not having played before like most complex modern games. It’s pretty easy to remember to: A) get to the finish, B) tunnel through the blocks in your way, C) hurt friends, D) trash talk and try to distract them.

I came away with a very positive experience, and despite only winning one of the multiplayer games I took it as a great sign that repeated play can improve your skills and it isn’t random luck whether you win or lose.

Raskulls is due to hit Live Arcade in the coming months as it makes its way through Microsoft’s approval process, but there was one last thing I had to ask Phil.

Raskulls has been in development for approximately 2-3 years, an obscenely long time for a Live Arcade game.

Could it have suffered the Alan Wake / Splinter Cell Conviction identity crisis midway through and required redevelopment?

“No” replied Phil.

“We just kept working on it until we got it right”.

© 2010 Alex Baldwin

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Filed under: 3rd Party Games, Console gaming, Demo impressions, E3 2010, Events, Game Impressions, Game Industry News, Industry News, Interviews, New Game Information, New Xbox 360 Games, XBLA News-Reviews, Xbox 360, Xbox 360 3rd Party Games, Xbox 360 Game Previews, Xbox 360 News, XboxLive Marketplace Tagged: | Age Of Zombies, Avatar The Last Airbender, Blast-Off, E3, E3 2010, E3 news, Echoes, Fruit Ninja, Halfbrick studio, iPod, Raskulls, Rocket Racing