[h1] Smash Crates Review [/h1]
[i] Scroll to the Comments for an Overall Summary [/i]
Fat Alien Cat's long awaited game 'Smash Crates' has finally hit the digital shelves in early access, and you can really see the talent of this small development team shining through it. Having been playing more and more multiplayer player party/casual games at home, I knew I had to try it on release day. First of all, know that the game is still in Early Access, and you can check the release notes for more details on the development timeline.
[u] Concept [/u]
The concept of the game is brilliant- tiny crates battle for overall supremacy in an 8-bit arena, attempting to crush their opponents with the use of tactics, collectable items, or just brute spamming ability. This isn't a new concept by any means, but a well-executed casual battle brawler multiplayer is always a recommended addition to all of our party game arsenals.
Smash Crates is a neat package of all the elements you want from a game like this - it's a small download, a quick start-up, easy to set-up a remote connection, and a simple UI and game settings screen. Realistically, it took about 2 minutes from booting the game to begin smashing with friends.
Fat Alien Cat nailed the brief on this one :)
[u] Art and Music [/u]
For casual games, I'm never one to worry too much about art and music, since often a small neat game with great mechanics is far more fun than a beautiful unplayable game, but there are some things to note in Smash Crates.
For the background OST, a majority of the tracks are really catchy, and we found ourselves bopping along to them. But on the flip side, some felt very disjointed - particularly the backing track to International Crate Station (a map that I had a few issues with, which I'll touch on more in other sections). I also felt the introduction '1...2...3...SMASH' voice-over was gaudy, and certainly the audio recording of this voice was not done particularly professionally. Whilst there's been some audio conditioning on the sound byte, it felt very cheap. For a once off thing, inconsequential. For the start of every single battle? Not a good look.
Conversely, I have nothing but awe for the art! The style is classic 8-bit, and is absolutely stunning. The maps look excellent, and the I found myself spending a little time at the beginning of each map just admiring the effort and detail to each landscape. Marvellous work by the artist on this one!
[u] Gameplay [/u]
The important stuff - how was it to play? [b] In summary, fun! [/b]
It took no time whatsoever to learn the mechanics of the game - jump high, come down and smash onto the head of your fellow combatants, or to break the ground beneath you. A dash allows you to zip around to dodge attacks, or to break ground horizontally. Items buried in the map give you the ability to drop little gravity lifts, conveyor belts, build more ground, and a few other interesting abilities.
What this game does better than any other game in its class is the 'build map' ability. To build the map as you fight was something I've not come across in a brawler, and it was executed flawlessly. Opponent more mobile than you? Bury them! Is lava slowly rising? Build a tower and live your short life as Saruman in your own personal Isengard. It had us falling over each other in giggling fits as we discovered more and more ways to mess with each other.
Each map had it's own gimmick - either lava rising as a Doom-esque soundtrack accompanies your burning demise, or a cityscape with items hidden in windows (props again to the dev artist - stellar stuff). With the ability to change game length, we could prioritise our game-time in maps we preferred.
Perhaps we expected too much of it, but our least favourite portion of the game was the International Crate Station. As it started up, we were debating about what it would be: low gravity battle? Surely those little asteroids on the bottom are going to zip across the screen and we'll have to dodge them. But no, nothing of note really happened, and we couldn't help but feeling a little let down
Which led to my realisation - we need to see more variation in the maps beyond cosmetics and the shape of the starting grid, Altered mechanics, differences in the environment, changes in physics - honestly, anything to keep it fresh. I'd also like the ability to alter these mechanics ourselves in the pre-match settings. Because after about an hour of game-time, we got pretty bored. I hope that the development team at Fat Alien Cat attempts to increase re-playability in some way, because I feel it might be the game's biggest flaw, and not one that a band-aid solution of new maps can fix on it's own.
[u] Bugs [/u]
Now it is an early access game, so issues and bugs are always to be expected - so this doesn't effect my overall feeling towards Smash Crates, but I would be remiss to not take a quick moment to mention it. Though I have to say, just one bug is probably the lowest number of bugs I've ever seen in an Early Access game on release day. It's clearly been play-tested well.
- If you're playing on keyboard, once a match ends, it prompts you to 'Press Start' to continue. No keyboard input could make this happen, making us have to force shutdown the game and boot it up again.
[u] Things to Change and Implement [/u]
I have just a myriad of things I'd love to see in Smash Crates. The developer notes indicate that there is a lot more on the way, so watch this space. But here's what I have; from the game-ruining stuff, down to the nitty gritty wishlist:
- By far the most frustrating thing about Smash Crates is the inability to change the default keybindings. I will note that the game begins by stating 'Controller Preferred', and with a play-test on controller, it's aeons better. But the default (and unchangeable) keyboard bindings, whether you play with WASD or the Arrow keys, is just clunky and uncomfortable. Don't forget that many folks may end up playing on keyboards, making this a necessary change.
- Coming back to re-playability, I'd love to see customisation options. Whether there are more playable crates to unlock, or just accessories or cosmetics to access. I do appreciate the ability to change the colour of the crates, but there needs to be more to do here. As a player, you find your interest quickly dwindling, and whilst it is a party game, little things like 'I can put a top hat on my milk crate now!' can be enough to make you feel invested.
- I was pretty surprised to see there's no way to take on an AI opponent (ie. bots). Though this isn't unprecedented in a brawler game (see 'Stick Fight'), for a game with a tight set of mechanics like this, it's strange to not be given the opportunity to populate the rest of a lobby with bots, so if only two or three players are available, the map doesn't feel empty. Less people, less fun. So I hope to see bots in future releases.
- The International Crate Station map needs a full re-work in my opinion; felt like such a missed opportunity. With that gorgeous map art, there needs to be better environmental mechanics to match it.
- The ability to also navigate the menus with mouse as well as the keys feels like an oversight, and would be very nice.
- Though often set to a very low priority for developers in early access, and I completely understand why, I'd love to see achievements and badges.
[Overall Summary In Comment!]
