$20 Steam giftcard to the first 3 who can outscore me at my own game… That was the challenge we set up last weekend. And gamers showed up. Ready to dethrone the gamedev.
If you’re a video person, you can watch matches go down here:
The game, Devoid, is a pixel art twin-stick shooter where energy drains with every move. Pilots must fight swarms of enemies to regain that lost energy in a procedurally generated space dungeon. The goal? Survive station to station and make the escape.
I played against a number of people, but later in the day a group of friends walked in. They are familiar with the game, so I knew things were about to get wild. They first wanted to play splitscreen. In Devoid scores are derived from damage dealt, and completion time, which is surprisingly balanced regardless of the amount of players you have in a run.
Then one of them went solo. Early in his run he got the parts needed for a sick overheat build. His item synergy, along with skill got him all the way to The Shelf setting an absurdly high score. The room was electric. I was in shock. And the pressure was on.
He ended up with a score slightly over 30,000. Which was daunting. But I also have a ridiculous amount of hours in the game from my own debugging, and playtesting so I was confident I could put up a good fight. And so, I began my rebuttal run.
Shortly into the action I stumbled onto an absurdly broken item combination which was labeled as “f*#ing overpowered” by the crowd. And oh man it was. With this cracked setup I was able to defeat the Broodmother in the Graveyard of Giants, and cruise through the Shelf, surpassing his score.
Looking back I wish I had thrown the match, but dang this game gets you competitive and I forgot to lose haha. So I gave him a giftcard anyway for putting up a crazy score.
The remaining giftcards went out to the top scorers from the day. I owe it to all the people who came out to try the game. I learned so much from watching them play.
Think you can beat a score of 30,000? You can embark into the space dungeon yourself. Fly your shuttle over to the Devoid Steam page to download the playtest.
Until next time,
Charlie Dill