During the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Paradox Interactive revealed three of the games that had only previously been teased, confirming that the publisher strongly believes that “size doesn’t matter when it comes to big gameplay experiences from small development teams.”
The Showdown Effect, Red Frontier and Dungeonland have all been officially revealed and are in development for the PC. Each title will be available to view and to play at Paradox’s Interactive’s gaming lounge at GDC.
The Showdown Effect:
Developed by Arrowhead, the creators of Magicka, The Showdown Effect is a 2.5D multiplayer action game inspired by 80’s and 90’s action movies where champions from different eras of time fight to the death, for fun, for glory and for awesome. Players will battle for the upper hand through cunning use of different weapons, the game’s wide range dynamic environments and even the engine’s own dramatic audiovisual effects.
The focus of The Showdown Effect is in recreating the outrageous action found in classic action movies and taking them one step further. Players can pick weaponry from the silver screen’s unparallelled arsenal, including shotguns, frying pans, lightsabers, assault rifles, grenades, katanas, gauss guns and anything in between. No explosion is too loud and no bullet dodge is implausible – The Showdown Effect is all about impaling your friend with nearby broomstick and dropping a “Stick around”-taunt as you jetpack heroically off to the next enemy.
Beneath all of this The Showdown Effect is heavily invested in the fundamentals of platforming, providing controls that are responsive and satisfying when it comes to simply running and jumping. Likewise, as a multiplayer game The Showdown Effect will offer all the progressive rewards and unlocks that players have come to love and to cherish.
RED Frontier:
RED FRONTIER is a multiplayer real time strategy game, wrapped in the easy-to-pick-up and easy-to-play structure of a first person shooter. It’s being developed by Zeal Game Studios.
The player takes the role of a mercenary commander in the outer rims of the galaxy, fighting for control over the rare spaceship fuel Starvoid. On the battlefield, the player has an arsenal of combat droids, vehicles and ingenious abilities ranging from deployable machine gun turrets and minefields to repair nanoids and orbital rocket strikes. Everything is constantly refilled as the commander instantly is allowed to re-enter the battlefield after being eliminated.
Dungeonland
Dungeonland is a cooperative action game where players take control of a group of adventurers in their visit to a crazy and dangerous medieval theme park.
The Evil Lord Dungeon Master, tired of seeing his Grand Plan for World Domination™ constantly being thwarted by nosy, big-chinned heroes, is scheming to stop them once and for all!
With the aid of a considerable loan from the Evil Overlord Foundation™, Dungeon Master has laboriously built a nefarious theme park, tempting adventurers with a chance to explore the most dangerous and exotic places, fight the most powerful monsters and possess the most wondrous magical items.
Playing as The Rogue, The Warrior or The Mage, players will loot, level up, customize their hero and acquire new skills as they work their way through waves of monsters and traps leading all the way through deadly dungeons. From deadly jungles, to lush magical gardens and a dragon’s lair, players will adventure through meticulously crafted themed environments all the way up to the tower of Dungeon Master himself.
