No, the game isn’t officially confirmed for the Wii U just yet, but because Witch Team hopes to bring it to the Wii U in the near future, we figured it was worth our while to give it a shot and tell you a little bit about this up and coming title from the Mini Indie Booth.
This game starts you off with a bang. Pick an android, and get battling! It’s a twin-stick shooter with ridiculous amounts of enemies, and you use both controller joysticks to control movement and aim, and use the bumper buttons as triggers.
Players who enjoy the experience of being completely surrounded by enemies to the point where you’re inevitably not going to make it out without a miracle (or some serious skillz) will love Assault Android Cactus. We’re just going to put that right out there. If you happen to not enjoy dying a lot in a game, and get frustrated by inevitable doom, then you’ll want to walk away slowly and not look back.
Now, here’s the really interesting kicker that will either make friends love each other more, or stop speaking to each other after ten minutes of play—there is a battery powering the android characters, and the battery drains slowly as the level moves forward. That means no lives pool, so folks who die a lot won’t be taking chances away from the, ahem, really good players. But the more deaths, the faster the battery drains… which is not exactly a good thing for the players taking the bulk of the work load.
But overall, this actually works better than a pool of lives (or a pre-set number of lives), because it forces an offensive tactic from all the players. Some enemies drop power cells that help to charge the team’s battery, which provides incentive for everyone to push instead of hang back. You’ll have to work together (up to four players) to make it through the level alive!
Players also have two weapons to draw from, with the primary weapon using unlimited ammo and the second weapon—the more powerful of the two—only being usable for a short time before overheating. And bonus, the game will switch you automatically back to your primary weapon when the second one runs out of juice, so you won’t be sitting there clicking fruitlessly and causing your team to die.
Sadly, there is no quick move (ie. evasive action) for your android, though we’re wondering if this is just an oversight that will be implemented in the final version of the game. The camera also had a few issues of its own, but anyone who plays cooperative games knows that this is a challenging feature to get just right.
Currently, Assault Android Cactus is planned for Steam, PSN Vita, PS4, and hopefully Wii U, though release dates for all haven’t yet been confirmed or even ballparked. Either way, if you love complete chaos and lots of shooty-shooty, this is one to watch out for in the coming year.
