For those who love a good twin-stick shooter, Smith and Winston certainly looks quite interesting and it has some pretty sweet design.
Currently in “First Access” on itch.io (their form of Early Access), Smith and Winston is a hand-built metroidvania-styled twin-stick shooter in a world built with voxels. Have a look at their teaser:
The developer kindly provided a testing key and I can confirm that it works rather nicely. The Steam Controller paired with SC Controller also works quite well in it. I often find twin-stick shooters not all that great with aiming on the right pad of the Steam Controller, in Smith and Winston it actually feels pretty natural which is awesome.
Since the world is built with voxels, it’s almost entirely destructible. You can shoot through walls, blow a hole in the floor to make enemies fall to their death, make a path for yourself through something and it does actually look really quite stylish. Interestingly, they’re not just using a destructible environment to look cool with explosions, some portals you need are also buried requiring you to dig them out which I thought was a fun idea. I hope they do more interesting things with it like that.
Camera controls are quite nice too since it’s also a fully 3D game, allowing you to rotate all the way around your character as well as adjust the tilt on it to get the position you want.
Unlike a lot of games, they’re not sticking in random generation. I like that, because so many games have now moved towards random generation that they can end up feeling a lot less personal, hopefully with the hands-on approach to world building the developer will be able to make it stay interesting.
The combat can be a challenge since you only have limited lives and no health bar, if you’re hit you go down and you have to respawn. The movement system is also quite nice, with you being able to dash forwards and boost upwards to reach new areas and avoid enemies in a flash.
I really love what I’m seeing here and it could be especially fun when they add in two player co-op, which is planned. It’s a little limited right now since it’s still in development but very promising indeed.
They are planning a Steam release when it’s further along, for now it’s only on itch.io.