Ripout’s standout feature isn’t the retro-futuristic ’80s aesthetic. It’s not the excellent gunplay, or the way the little aliens sneak around their industrial spaceships before joining up with the bigger aliens and coming. to kill you It’s not the looter shooter’s aspiration, nor is it the rogue setting of his levels. No, it’s the gun. your weapon Your favorite weapon.
That’s right, your gun is alive, and it’s not something incessant and irritating like your Johnson in Shadows of the Damned, or those endlessly joking lunatic firearms in High on Life. Your weapon is better; more ‘man’s best friend’ than ‘obnoxious bell’. In Ripout, you control a small pet alien, resembling something between a shrunken xenomorph and a gothic gargoyle, that fires bullets from its maw and snatches body parts from grotesque aliens. And you can pet him, if you feel so compelled.
This living weapon is at the core of everything Ripout is doing. The game, a self-confessed boomer shooter from a developer team that draws heavily from ’90s shooters, is a first game effort that has no cutscenes, cutscenes, or “fluff” (according to Creative Director Goran Rajsic). . Instead, the 10-strong development team has focused all their efforts on shooting, level setup, and of course your weapon.
While you might look at the embedded gameplay demo above and think “oh, it’s like DOOM!”, Rajsic reckons it’s more comparable to Doom 3 or Quake. The game, which can be played in multiplayer co-op, is more of a tactical shooter than a run-and-gun rampage.
“Even though it’s similar to Doom, it’s not about running and gunning,” explains Rajsic. “You are entering the unknown, you are entering space, you are entering difficult confrontations. You have to think about how you’re going to approach situations, how you’re going to build weapons, how you’re going to experiment.”
This is where your pet comes in: on each of the randomly generated ships you come across, you’ll find little alien creatures wandering around. If you send your pet weapon to find these creatures, you can use them as weapons. Some turn into strong melee claws that you can use to knock enemies back, others unleash swarms of heat-seeking bio-missiles. Pick one up, and it’s like you’re using two living alien weapons. He is sick.
To move around the ships and help rescue humanity from the alien threat, you’ll need to focus on targeting your pet at enemies’ weak points – mutants can have limbs and weapons ripped off, and if you want to survive in this difficult game (difficulty increases depending on how many people are playing), you’ll want to weaken your enemies as much as possible. You’ll also want to make sure those little critters wandering around don’t get attached to the mutants. Because that is going to make your life very difficult.
“There are no bosses in the game,” Rajsic tells us. “We wanted to use combinations of bugs instead.” There is a mutant, a big bastard, who will be able to throw your pet at you if a certain type of alien joins him. There is another one that can blow you up with explosives once he merges with the mutants. You must be careful and you must use your pet to catch aliens before they increase the power of your enemies too much.
“It’s better to pick up the aliens so the enemies don’t,” Rajsic explains. “Because they become very difficult to defeat once they’re powered up enough.” This is demonstrated right in front of us when he, a lead developer on the game, is killed almost immediately when one of the larger monsters shows up with a couple of alien enhancements attached to his body. He teleports behind Rajsic and kills him.
The positive? We can go back to the central nave and inspect the weapon again. In each run, you can craft pieces as you explore. The game is part shooter and part roguelike, with a host of items sticking with you between runs. This means: good news! – you can upgrade your pet and make it even more powerful, even faster, even better. Maybe even cuter (if you find the horror of Alien, The Fly, and The Thing cute, that is).
“We have a lot of unique animations and we’re still working on making the pet feel more alive,” Rajsic tells us as we pet the little guy. He moves his jaws and trills. I can’t wait to see him rip another alien apart.
Ripout is doing a lot of really cool stuff, and in a world where boomers continue to gain popularity and get better, it has a chance to stand out as something really special. Ripout will be released on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S in 2022.
