Racketboy

In the past I have professed my love for Alien Hominid, experienced many a laugh from Dad N Me, but I have been eagerly anticipating a new multiplayer game from the indie geniuses at The Behemoth.

We heard some small details about their newest project, now known as Castle Crashers, a year ago, but we have finally have many more details to drool over.

With Alien Hominid, The Behomoth started with strong influences from Contra and Metal Slug and blended in their own style and polished it with modern gaming gloss in order to resurect a genre that has been forgotten by the gaming masses. Castle Crashers continues in that tradition by utilizing a gameplay technique similar to the Sega Saturn classic, Guardian Heroes and NES cult favorite, River City Ransom.

Like Guardian Heroes, each of the four differently-colored characters has their own fighting style, special attacks, and abilities.

In addition to the standard brawler formula, characters can level up throughout the levels in order to build up their abilities.

These RPG-like elements are the characteristic that made Guardian Heroes and River City Ransom stand out in a sea of side-scrolling beatemups.

The demo of the upcoming XBox Live Arcade version shows off its widescreen support which is a warm welcome to a 4-player brawler like this. (A crowded, chaotic screen was one of the weaknesses of Guardian Heroes). The 2D artwork looks incredible up to this point and the dramatic background animations and soundtrack even gives me chills.

Castle Crashers originally debuted the game in alpha form running on the GameCube at last year’s Comic-Con. Currently The Behemoth plan to release the game in early 2007 for Xbox Live Arcade in tandem with the XBLA release of Alien Hominid. By that time, Castle Crashers will actually be about 2 years into development, so it should be very polished.

Pricing has not yet been determined, and there is no word if Castle Crashers will remain an XBox Live Arcade exclusive.

The guys at The Behemoth decided to skip traditional retail distribution since the possibility of online multiplayer and episodic content on Xbox 360 was very appealing to them. Since The Behemoth is a small indie developer, they are excited about not having to work out a deal with a publisher and lose income. It will also keep the price of game down which will increase the chance that casual gamers will give it a try.

Since the Alpha version of the game was on the Gamecube, I was getting my hopes up for a Nintendo port. Since the developers like online distribution, maybe a Wii Virtual Console version will soon follow? We will just have to wait and see.

Additional Links:
Castle Crashers Video Clips
Castle Crashers Screenshots
Castle Crashers Official Website

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XBox 360, Fighters/Brawlers