Move-controlled screenless dueling game QuickDraw slated for PS3 and PS4
GlowTag mixes video games and ass-grabbing with spectacular results.
Quickdraw - a screenless Move-based dueling game in which people enact a Mexican standoff with Sony's motion-controller in conjunction with the sound of a bell tolling - is slated for release on PS3 and PS4, developer Greenfly Studios told Eurogamer at E3.
I wrote about QuickDraw a few months back, but at the time it was just a cool concept without an announced commercial release. Now Greenfly will self-publish the two-to-seven player party game.
The game is scheduled to come out on PC and Mac around September or October and Greenfly said it would like to release the PS3 version around the same time. It's not been priced yet, but Greenfly assured us it would be rather low.
Amusingly, Greenfly co-founder said that 10 MPs were playing the motion-controlled shooter at a UKIE event at the House of Parliament. "We wanted to introduce to MPs that there was a lot more to games than just Tetris or shooting and killing each other," explained Greenfly founder Stephen Morris. "We were trying to encourage that there's a diversity involved with it as well."
I had a chance to play QuickDraw at E3 and it was good, silly fun. One quirk though: the Move controllers don't register where you're pointing, so it's really whoever pulls the trigger first regardless of aim. As such, it's all too easy to cheat the system, but it's much more fun to play by the rules - even if you have to self-impose them.
I was more enamoured with Greenfly's side project, GlowTag, aka "GrabAss." I've written about GlowTag before too, and it was a real standout. It's basically just tag where everyone wears a Move wand in their back pocket with the trigger facing outward. One person's wand will glow and everyone must rush in to slap the trigger emitting from their rear. Then a new target is selected and the whole process repeats for a few minutes.
GlowTag actually uses the screen just a little in that it tallies up everyone's score based on how long they've survived being "it." At the end of each round a victor is named.
It sounds simple - and it is - but it's stupidly addictive and actually quite tense when everyone stares at each other wondering when someone will turn into a target. Being that your marker is in your back pocket, it's easy to psych out the crowd by simply pointing at someone and yelling "it's him!" to gain a few extra precious seconds on the clock before the flock realises they've been led astray.
Unfortunately this wasn't played at Parliament. Oh darn!
Hilariously, GlowTag was born when Morris had to develop a "street game" for the W00T game festival in Copenhagen and his mate slapped his ass. "I was trying to come up with the idea for it and a friend of mine came up behind me and gave me a slap on the bum and I was like 'ooh! Game idea!'" Morris explained.
No release has been set for GlowTag, but Morris said he's aiming for the same platforms as QuickDraw (PS3, PS4, PC and Mac) and it will likely launch in Spring 2014.
Looking ahead, Morris said he'd like to work on a Wii remote-based version of Marco Polo where one person is blindfolded and by hitting a button they'd "ping" the other players, meaning a sound would emit from their controllers. The blindfolded person would then have to catch their "pinging" prey. This idea is still being prototyped, but it sounds fun, albeit a little unwieldy in living rooms.