While everyone else has been worrying about their coverage of The Game Awards, where Hades 2 is in the mix across a number of categories, I’ve instead been trying out a freshly released demo of a new game called Skewer Squad. It’s quite fun, too!
This fun and colourful little demo offers a small slice of the upcoming game by Fake Owls, which is all about skewering pieces of food, seasoning them, and then using said food items to blast away at an ever-growing rodent army. I should probably explain that further…
Meet the Skewer Squad
The game takes place on a BBQ grill, with your skewers on one side and a gang of weird rats coming at you from the other.
At the bottom of the screen, you have the three skewers, and each one has three slots. These slots can be filled with different food types, some that fire pellets, some that defend, and some that boost the abilities of others.
A slice of potato
Your starting character gives you a certain piece of food and some individual stat buffs, just like the different potato heads in Brotato.
After that, your build is shaped by the food you choose between rounds and the various condiments you use to tweak your stats. Each round will see bigger, more dangerous attacks on your grill, but you’ve got enough skewers to form an effective strategy.
Just like Brotato, you can pin stuff you want in the shop for later, plus you can combine items of the same level to create upgraded versions. It’s a simple system that we are seeing being adopted all over.
Breakout the BBQ
Where Skewer Squad differs significantly is the gameplay feel, which feels more like a cross between Breakout and a game of table foosball than a standard auto-shooter.
Your three skewers can move to cover several different vertical lanes, and it doesn’t take long before you really have to think about the composition of your skewers, because it won’t be too long before a poor build is overwhelmed, especially when those pesky rats start throwing baseballs.
In my example of how you could set-up, the top skewer might have your defensive units on it. Lemons, crabs, and spikey sea urchins can bounce enemies who get too close, flinging them back into play.
Next, in the middle of the three horizontal skewers, you might have a couple of turrets firing pellets, but also another unit between them that boosts the damage of anything firing behind it.
The final row of skewers could then contain your heaviest hitters. Some fruit, like oranges, can inflict sour damage over time, and with something in front of your best fruit boosting its damage, you can start to make short work of standard enemies.
You can also add flavours, purchased from the shop between rounds, to do things such as boost your luck or give your shots the ability to rebound. Some of these feel like they could do with more spice, pardon the pun, but overall it’s an effective system.
Final thoughts on the demo
It takes a while to get going, and I would like to see a fast-forward button to speed up those first rounds and get us to the fun stuff more quickly. Other than that, I look forward to seeing how varied the gameplay gets once more characters and new items are in play.
Skewer Squad is a simple-looking game built around an even simpler concept, but it actually surprised me just how engaging it is, once the action gets going.
There’s something about this one, so head over to the Steam page and check out the demo if you find yourself intrigued by the prospect of this fruity new auto-shooter.
