Buckle up and hold on tight to your popcorn: SHOWGUNNERS is launching on May 2, 2023!
Formerly called “Homicidal All Stars”, our turn-based tactical love letter to the ‘90s has been given a new title deserving of its showy, gunny gameplay and its gun-forward, show-off aesthetic!
Showgunners will put you in charge of a team of contestants in this high-stakes, turn-based-tactical competition where they must survive terrifying encounters with psychopath mercenaries. Each episode of the deathly broadcast programming includes:
EXPLORATION AND PUZZLES
Each level is an obstacle course of deadly traps and lethal puzzles in real-time. Explore hidden areas, find loot, solve the puzzles, all while taking a stroll around what’s left of society as we once knew it. Gain fame by avoiding death, surviving rounds, and eliminating your enemies with gruesome panache. Your fans will love it. And sponsors too!
TURN-BASED COMBAT GALORE
We've hand-crafted 31 tactical levels, each with its own twists and interactive environments. Once you complete the main campaign, there are even more challenges to complete. Build your party from a rowdy roster of contestants. Each character has a unique set of skills, weapons and progression options that will help you survive whatever the producer throws at you.
SHARE YOUR FAVORITE MOMENTS WITH TWITCH INTEGRATION
We're bringing dangerous entertainment programming with our new Twitch Mode! Your viewers can vote to change your game to help or hinder combat scenarios. What will happen next? It’s definitely not up to you to decide! Wow! Suspense!
Showgunners is releasing on Tuesday, May 2nd, 2023! Join our community and stay tuned for more info before release!
Hey guys, Jan Rawski, lead game designer of Homicidal All-Stars here. A common question from the community has been what it actually means that the game is “handcrafted” and what’s in it for you. Well, I’ll be happy to answer!
After our past work on the original Hard West and Phantom Doctrine, we knew exactly what kind of experience we wanted to deliver in our next tactical game. Briefly put: we wanted it to be an intense and fun ride where the combat is as good as possible at all times, and where no battle is like any other. We also wanted to give the player a very strong sense of progression, with the battles gradually becoming more intricate and demanding as the player also gains more powerful characters and tools.
We are convinced that the best way to achieve that is to do literally everything by hand: the placement of every single wall, box, and enemy as well as levels designed as exciting sequences of events, rather than just battlefields in different shapes and sizes. But let me elaborate.
One general advantage of this approach is that we can deliver the maximum quality. With procedurally generated combat encounters (which we ourselves did to some degree in Phantom Doctrine), we would have limited control over what actually happens on the levels. The enemy placement, the player’s approach options and not to mention the pacing and difficulty curve - we did not want to entrust the RNG gods with such important matters! And as experienced players of the genre ourselves, we feel that, while procedural encounters can be enjoyable, the story missions are usually the highlights - so why not make an entire game this way?
By doing things by hand, we can guarantee that every one of our levels is good and unique. For instance, our many different enemies appear in just the right place at just the right time, so they can give you one of those satisfying headaches that you play turn-based games for. As a bonus, all of this also gave our talented artists the ability to make every level visually striking and memorable.
We also wanted to achieve maximum gameplay diversity. Every single level has a central idea which gives you a different kind of challenge to overcome, requires a different approach, and delivers a unique experience as a result. The ultimate embodiment of this philosophy are our different level mechanics and the involvement of the show director. Combatants get run over by trains, have explosive barrels dropped on them or doors get locked just under their noses - we’ve got it all.
Finally, with Homicidal All-Stars we wanted to deliver a story-driven experience centered on cool and memorable characters. The game is the personal journey of Scarlett and the companions that join her along the way. You can expect many twists and turns and a mad, mad world that’s a disturbing joy to discover. Again, developing the game as a tightly designed sequence of levels and events felt like the best way to deliver on this.
In all of this, you still get a lot of tactical freedom, especially as your squad grows and your characters gain a wide array of unique abilities. And the same encounters do have a tendency to develop in different ways, especially if you mix things up on your end!
We did prioritize delivering one awesome experience over replay value, but if you enjoyed your first ride, you will find reasons to do more than one playthrough. You can replay levels with a different combination of sponsorships, team members, items or weapons. For the completionists we added a lot of secrets and optional battles and objectives. And braver players can also try their hands on hard difficulty and in iron man mode.
Anyway, we really enjoy all the feedback that we’re getting and we thank you for sharing your experience with the demo. We can’t wait to let you play the full game!
Cheers!
The Homicidal All-Stars demo is out!
Hey community!
We are super proud and happy to celebrate the release of the Homicidal All-Stars demo! Get a taste of the excellent turn-based combat in a crazy reality gameshow! What if the Running Man was a game show today? It would be Homicidal All-Stars!
Fight it off against waves of enemies with Scarlett, Tybalt and Zoe. Each character brings a whole different set of abilities and playstyle to the fight. Use your teams special abilities to quickly take out the opposition, because the show Director Orion Ford has something special in store for you…
We will be streaming throughout the Steam Next Fest celebrations. All streams are hosted by none other than Jonny Loquasto, the voice talent who plays Joe Stern in the game. Joe Stern is the games’ shoutcaster you will hear a lot in the demo. And to make it even more interesting, we are showing several new levels during the coming days!
Check it out!
PS, how about some extra 90s nostalgia love with our fresh and new action figure trailer!
Play the Demo on October 3rd!
Hey Community!
You’ve been asking many questions about the game but the best way to answer them is to GET YOU IN THERE! That’s why we’re launching a DEMO on October 3rd at 7am PDT. so you can get a small taste of Homicidal All-Stars. We’re planning to release at Steam Next Fest, so please tell a friend and stream your favorite moments. We’re on the lookout for the best to share on our channels. In the meantime, we revisited our favorite childhood moments with our latest action-figure trailer. No characters were harmed in the making of this film, except they totally were. You all did this as kids right? Right?... Check it out below.
We’re sorry that you can’t get one of these incredible action figures, BUT you can get the game soon so please wishlist now!
Introducing Joe Stern, the shoutcaster for Homicidal All-Stars!
Welcome back to Homicidal All-Stars!
I’m Joe Stern, and I can’t wait to call the play-by-play for this explosive new season of everyone’s favorite reality survival competition! I’ve had a sneak peek at what’s in store for these contestants, and let me tell you, they’re gonna be in for the fight of their lives! Deadly traps, vicious defenders, and stunning twists that will have you on the edge of your seat! Will any of these gritty challengers survive long enough for us to see a grand finale against the ultimate opponent? We’ll all find out together, on this season of Homicidal All-Stars, sponsored by the Omega Corporation!
From now you will hear me in the developer stream every week to share more about the creation of Homicidal All-Stars. Join us every week on Thursday 8pm CEST/11am PT on Steam and Twitch!
Want to see gameplay? Livestreams begin!
Hey Community!
Many of you have been asking about gameplay and have questions about Homicidal All-Stars. We got you. Last week we premiered our first weekly live stream HERE where we showed off part of the Demo from Gamescom.
Thursday Sept 15th at 20:00 (CEST) / 19:00 (BST) / 11:00 (PDT) we join in-game announcer Joe Stern (Jonny Loquasto) and Lead Designer Jan Rawski to show you more and talk about level design. Ask your questions here now and/or jump on over to chat
