14 DAY TRIAL // Indie developer The Behemoth has revealed its new game, codenamed Game 4, and so far it fits right in with Castle Crashers and BattleBlock Theater, its previous creations.
The upcoming project is being developed for PC and Xbox One, and studio co-founder Dan Paladin calls it a fast-paced turn-based cooperative game with role-playing elements.
The game's trailer reveals it to have a distinct personality that involves cosmic bears, a lot of gibberish and over-the-top action, with characters scurrying across a hex board to deliver strategic hits and space shuttles making a cameo from time to time.
The creator of BattleBlock Theater and Castle Crashers is known for its patented humor, and Game 4 continues in the same fashion. A giant space-bear has crashed into Earth, causing all kinds of havoc.
"The bear blood is screwing up space and time as we know it. We're assuming the role of Horatio, because he's just a farmer in the middle of nowhere. He doesn't actually know what the bear blood does, but we know that it's messing up everything," Paladin reveals.
"What it's really doing is taking any history of the earth and history of any other planet with any other race and just flip-flopping them all over the universe. Earth as we know it has all kinds of crap everywhere," he adds.
The game's reveal trailer shows players recruiting half-cyclops alongside grumpy cupcakes into their armies, and it appears that Game 4 has a lot of character customization and tactical abilities. The game is set in a huge world that frequently changes due to torrents of cosmic bear blood messing with its fabric.
Defense is decided by what type of hat your characters are wearing, and anyone can be the game's main hero. Units gain experience points and level up, but in The Behemoth's patented manner, things are not as complicated as in traditional turn-based strategy titles.
"I personally have a hard time with certain turn-based games, because they're so complicated that I can't keep track of everything. If it were just a little simpler, I'd get it. But I wanted to see how far we could go in simplifying the mechanics while keeping as deep a strategy game together," Paladin explains.
The game is different from the developer's past work, but it maintains the same tone that made its previous creations great. Game 4 is said to be already a year into development, headed for the Xbox One and PC platforms, but it currently has no prospective release window.
