Behind Basement Crawl for PS4

Hello fellow gamers!

I wanted to give you some information about a game we are currently developing for the PS4 launch window – Basement Crawl.

Gameplay-wise, Basement Crawl is a maze-based action game with some strategic elements. Our main inspirations were old classics like Spy vs. Spy and Bomberman, and gameplay revolves around setting up traps (self-detonated or activated by characters approaching it or stepping on it without noticing) to hurt other players. It’s focused on multiplayer, but basic single player campaigns with bots to fill in for missing characters will be available too.

While our inspirations go back to the retro classics, we are making a game up-to-date with the competition. It goes from the audio-visuals – Basement Crawl will be 2.5D game with dynamic cameras – to the game modes, characters and mechanics. We felt that many games nowadays are dependent on character development or luck and randomness, so we designed Basement Crawl to exclude the luck factor and remove the dependence on leveling-up characters. We want to make Basement Crawl as skill-based as possible and focus on hardcore players instead of casual or ‘middlecore’ players.

So expect to have much more control over what’s happening to you in every second of the game and expect to have to find your way out of situations by using your reflexes and fast thinking. Think of well-balanced, old-school fighting games – if you are new you can mash buttons randomly and have fun, but good players will always be able to show off their skills.

Basement Crawl will support both 4 player hot-seat and 8 player online play, as well as combinations of both. At the beginning, players will start with a selection of 4 available characters, all with their own unique skills balanced carefully against each other. And we want to show you the first three: midget clown, crash-test dummy and girl with a bear (or is it the other way around?).

While we want to keep the characters and unique skills to ourselves so as not to spoil future surprises, we would love to hear your feedback on our character designs. We are developers focused on Sony’s platform (we have two different games in final acceptance right now – Deathmatch Village and A-Men 2, both for both Vita and PS3) and feedback from the community is invaluable to us!

The Basement Crawl release date is still TBD, but we’ll update you with details as soon as we know more.