The open beta for Drifters is up now on Steam, and anyone who likes a novel shooter experience should check it out for its charming stylings and one-of-a-kind traversal mechanics. With both jetpacks and grappling hooks, an array of unique and wacky characters zoom, swing, and tumble through space-themed maps in a frantic hunt for treasure. It’s rare that shooters put so much focus into movement, which is one of the cores of practically any game, but often goes unnoticed. To get into the design philosophy of Drifters, we first asked what makes a good shooter in Dalton’s opinion.
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Dalton later explained that, in Drifters, it was important for the shooting mechanics to mesh well with all of the fast paced jet-packing and grapple-hooking going on. The biggest key to making that work was to allow for free aiming to be unaffected by movement, which allows engagements to happen “without hindering the locomotion of the player.” Clearly, advanced mobility is a huge selling point for the game, so we asked what the team’s guiding principles for mobility were: “… Momentum and Flow were things that we called out as being important to the end experience.” It seems like that focus on momentum and flow payed off, as Dalton expressed that it is perhaps his favorite part of the game.
Moving forward, Blind Squirrel will be focused on communicating with their community to help build Drifters Loot the Galaxy into something that reflects the desires of players. Dalton stated that one of their primary goals is to focus on fans and make the game “just as much theirs as it is ours.” For anyone who likes team based hero shooters and wants to get a feel for some fast-paced traversal, it’s worth giving the open beta a try.
Drifters Loot the Galaxy is currently in open beta on PC.
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