Wireframe - #33 - 2020

wfmag.cc \ 17

Early Access

Attract Mode

My Beautiful Paper Smile

The second title from Two Star Games – aka one-person

dev team Gavin Eisenbeisz – My Beautiful Paper Smile

carries on the mix of distinctive, unsettling visuals and

deeply unsettling horror. Where the last game My Friend

is a Raven dealt with the end of the world, MBPS covers

a world that still exists, in which all children have to be

‘perfect’ by order of the mad king. Keep your mask, keep

your smile, and make your way through a world that gives

no quarter for emotions other than happiness.

Bushiden

A Metroidvania mixing the look of a 16-bit
era Castlevania game and the cybernetic
enhancements of Samus’ finest outings,
Bushiden offers a sincere tickle of the nostalgia
gland. It looks absolutely fabulous, with a real
nineties vibe to the sprites, so the only question
we have over this one is: will it be fun? Shouldn’t
be too long a wait to find out, happily.

Conan Chop Chop

What happens when you mix the harsh, unforgiving

fantasy world of Hyboria with a developer known for its

work on bright-and-airy, casual-focused titles like Shopkins

and Wild Life? Conan Chop Chop, obviously. Bringing the

visual style you might expect from a studio such as Mighty

Kingdom – cartoony, basically – Chop Chop darkens the

colour palette a bit, ups the violence significantly (not

much death in Shopkins), and lets you and up to three

other players quest across Hyboria on a mission to... well,

crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and so

on and so forth.

What could have been a throwaway effort has actually

ended up a contender for ‘something we’re really looking

forward to’, and in an odd way we were happy to hear of

the game’s delay to spring – this showing there’s a real

effort being made to try and polish the finished product,

and not just accept whatever’s there and release it to the

world. As long as the violence is epic, the loot plentiful,

and the netcode solid, Conan Chop Chop could well find

itself one of the dark horses of co-op multiplayer in 2020.

Early Access

Attract Mode