Games of the Month: Treachery in Beatdown City, Mackerelfish Media and More!

What the report says

Games of the Month: Treachery in Beatdown City, Mackerelfish Media and More!Follow itch.ioFollowing itch.ioUnfollow itch.ioFollow itch.ioFollowing itch.ioUnfollow itch.ioWe’re back, back, back again with a brand new edition of itch.io’s Games of the Month! Yes I know it’s been a bit longer than a calendar month but that doesn’t mean the games are anything less than amazing. There are a ton of different genres represented here and something for everyone to love. Read on for the full details. 
 
 Treachery in Beatdown City
 Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, good things are able to happen in 2020.

Treachery in Beatdown City, the Beat ‘em Up/ Tactical RPG hybrid has and is just as good as I’ve been hoping for all these years. 
 If you are anything like me, seeing Beat ‘em Up and Tactical RPG listed next to each other is confusing. One genre is known for slow strategizing and the other speedy button mashing. It’s an odd couple to be sure but it works surprisingly well. Once you move into combat from the game’s overworld you are dropped into a pretty traditional Beat ‘em Up screen. You’re pacing back and forth along a (mostly) 2D plane and trying to work your way through crowds of enemies to deliver some street fight-based justice.

What makes Beatdown City’s approach unique is that at any point you can hit a button to open a menu of skills which use the game’s quickly replenishing skill points. Not only do these attacks do more damage than your non-menu based ones, they apply status effects which then open your opponents up for more attacks and damage. It’s a really smart system that ends up opening up massively as you unlock more moves and characters. 
 Narratively Beatdown City is set up as the explosive tale of rescuing a kidnapped president from ninja terrorists, but the game finds its footing in its portrayal of the problems affecting developer NuChallenger’s real life home of New York City.

Key details

Gentrifiers, racists, cops, and joggers are all on full display here and while this may seem a bit heavy, Beatdown City is funny -- really funny. It’s rare for me to laugh this often in a game, and even rarer for me to laugh this consistently. Every element of the game’s presentation is a vector for goofs and there’s a real sense of banding together and supporting your pals through comedy. Throughout the game’s modest play time I was tickled by its insistence that while things may be bad now, you can still find pockets of joy in the darkness and honestly, that’s exactly what we need in 2020. 
 
 Mackerelfish Media
 I love a good alternate reality game (ARG).

At their best they’re vectors for people to come together and sort through really obtuse clues to progress a strange narrative. Famously these sorts of games have involved running files through spectrographs, hiking out to the middle of nowhere to dig things up, and occasionally entering buildings fully staffed by actors. Unfortunately ARGs can only be played once which leaves the rest of us to play archaeologist reading through forum threads and Wikipedia pages if we miss the boat. 
 Luckily for everyone else who wants to play an ARG but can’t drop everything to play an ARG for weeks/ months at a time Friend of the Blog Nathalie Lawhead has released their very own ARG, Mackerelfish Media.

Much like a normal ARG there is a mysterious webpage that requires investigating, but unique to Mackerelfish Media is the fact that all of the players involved are cute fish. The dev says the game is designed like archaeology and it’s a sentiment that comes through in the game. Much like coming to a normal ARG late, something has gone down before you showed up but this plays with that fact repeatedly. But what really sets Mackerelfish apart is the fact that this ARG is played single player. Sure you could talk to some friends about it, but there’s no “call your friend in rural Canada to drive an hour and a half to dig up a capsule in the woods” element here.

More from the announcement

If you’ve wanted to check out this weird genre but were too scared to jump in, this is the perfect chance. 
 
 Project Kat
 There was a scene in the early to mid-2000s dedicated to making horror games in RPG maker. Somehow the engine dedicated to making turned-based RPGs got bent into providing scares for a generation of indie game developers.