FHG is a Cambridge based video game developer who started out in 2008 and their first game is “Slam Bolt Scrappers” is planned for 2011 release. I had a chance to visit the company and test an alpha release of SBS – it sounds like a combination of Tetris and Super Smash Bros. Its a concept that may be hard to wrap your head around at first, but makes more sense as you go along.
Here’s what Kotaku website had to say about SBS
Slam Bolt Scrappers is, among other things, a new take on Tetris-engineered combat. Build a tower out of the blocks you rotate and drop. Use the tower to destroy other stuff. The “stuff” at PAX East, where the game’s single-screen two vs. two multiplayer mode was shown, was the other team’s tower.
This is how it worked at PAX East: Using Xbox 360 controllers, a friend and I controlled two hat-wearing flying heroes. We were responsible for building a tower on the left side of the screen. To obtain building blocks — all shaped like Tetris pieces — we had to punch flying enemies. A destroyed enemy would leave a building piece floating in the air. We could fly over it to have it trail one of our characters and even gather a few more before dropping any. At any time, though, we could drop pieces on our side of the screen, rotating them if need be and creating a stack. The blocks in this demo version were blue, red or purple. We wanted to create squares of color: clusters of 2×2 red maybe, or, better, 4×4 purple.We were building our tower so we could destroy the tower being built by the other players. Each perfect square of color we created with our dropped blocks turned into a solidly-colored weapon. Red squares fired enemy-seeking missiles. Purple squares became mighty laser cannons. Blue squares became shield generators. The bigger the square of color we created, the more powerful the weapon. So a 2X2 red generated a small missile battery. A 4×4 clump of red was a beast. A 7X7, the most powerful in the game, is something I’ll dream of.
The weapons fire (or protect) automatically. As my friend and I coordinated our block-dropping to create squares of red and purple power, our arsenal’s lasers and missiles seared their way across the TV. Our fusillade fractured blocks in the other players’ tower even as those players tried to build big blue-square shield generators. Eventually, our offense broke through to a yellow-outlined block. Destroying it gave us the victory.
The game is still in the very early development stage (hence, the alpha/testing), but judging by what I saw so far its incredibly fun to play. While it seemed very confusing it first, it definitely sounds like its going to be an incredible experience once all the wrinkles will be ironed out and bugs fixed.
Further Info
FHG: Official Site / Facebook / Twitter
Slam Bolt Scrappers: Kotaku / Joystiq / Destructoid / Co-Optimus / Playstation Lifestyle
