Tag: mashed
Squad Blast is Overwatch, CS:GO, and that competitive shooter spirit mashed into a 2D platformer
EGX was two weeks ago, which is wild. Time has really flown by. But, there’s one game there that’s really stuck in my mind as of late — especially as I’ve been kicking my heels in Overwatch 2 queues and looking for a quick, competitive FPS fix in the downtime. Enter Squad Blast, which has fixed itself onto me ever since I got my hands on it back in London. It’s got the spirit of Overwatch and CS:GO, but all excitingly represented on a 2D plane. As a result, it really is quite brilliant.
I spent a good chunk of my time at EGX messing around with Squad Blast, and was fortunate enough to interview Anatolijs Ropotovs – CEO and founder of Ultrahorse – about the inspirations for the title, what the studio is hoping to achieve, and why it thinks players will hop over from some of the genre’s big hitters and try out this fresh, more 2D approach.
Squad Blast is a team-based competitive shooter, where you and your partner set out to outsmart and outgun the enemy team within short, punchy objective-based matches. It’s hero-based, which means different characters have different weapons and abilities, and even in my short hour-or-so playing it at the show I could feel the counter-pick meta bubbling behind the scenes. The sniper dominates mid-ranged rocket users, the shotgun beats out the sniper, and the rocket is damn good at cutting off offensive shotgun pushes. You can play defensive, you can play offensive, but you’ve absolutely got to play well… otherwise you’ll see the clear difference between yourself and your opponents. Like in any good competitive title.