Gears Tactics studio reveals new Stadia multiplayer shooter Outcasters
Deep but accessible game promises chaotic shot-bending combat
Splash Damage has announced Outcasters, a new multiplayer shooter coming to Stadia this fall.
Billed as a deep but accessible eight-player title, it’s the product of the Gears Tactics and Dirty Bomb studio’s first ever game jam.
Outcasters’ chaotic gameplay is built around its signature curve shot. Instead of firing straight, projectiles curve based on lines that you draw on the screen.
The game promises deep customisation elements, a large set of character abilities, and unique in-game pickups to use across its colourful combat arenas.
In a newly published interview, Splash Damage CEO Richard Jolly told VGC: “I guess we started from that game jam with that core mechanic of the curve shot and then built on it as a platform, but then also took a lot of those learnings from a kind of purist multiplayer experience that you have from games like Quake, where you’ve got to know the levels intimately, you’ve got to know the cadence by which the power-ups spawn and where they’re spawning, and then the area of control and area of denial that you have using your projectiles to stop people. All of those nuances are in there but they’re somewhat disguised in this slightly more accessible presentation.”
Outcasters will launch with two game modes, Last Caster Standing and the team-based Gold Rush, in which two teams compete to collect coins spawning on a map and deposit them in a piggy bank against a timer. New game modes, maps and characters will be released post-launch as part of a live content roadmap.
“We see this very much as a platform to build off,” Jolly told VGC. “The thing we’ve learnt about making multiplayer games is you can’t be obsessive over your game once it’s in people’s hands because they play the game far more than you do, they know it more than you do, so the big mantra we have at the studio is that once the game’s released, it’s the community’s game.
“So it’s letting go of your baby a little bit, but it’s also building it with your community, and I think it almost harkens back to the roots of being a mod team, where your whole process is about garnering feedback and changing and evolving, and we see this very much as a platform we can build new things on and on and we can run it for years.”
Further reading
Interview: Splash Damage partners with Google to launch new IP Outcasters
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