Havocado - Early Access Impressions

We're in a sort of Renaissance for party games, since titles like Gang Beasts and Overcooked have proved once again that there are few things more fun than getting a group of friends together on the couch to battle it out in simple but effective competitive and/or cooperative action. Havocado is another game looking to move into this space, and when it comes to inspirations, we'd say that Gang Beasts sits pretty high on the list.

That's not only because of the colourful, squishy avatars running around the screen, but also because of the wild and wobbly combat that comes with it. The key difference here though is that it's not just about grabbing and punching like drunkards in the street - the best damage can be done with weapons. Well, we say damage, but really it's about knocking your opponent off the edge, which is best done by knocking them out with various weapons so they can then be thrown, pushed, or slid into the abyss.

As you might have expected from this sort of quirky game, the weapons are equally outlandish, ranging from a super soaker to push your opponent gently away to a gun that freezes enemies in blocks of ice, as well as frag grenades and rocket launchers. Aiming is a bit of a problem when all of the characters are so floppy, but that's part of the fun, right?

The environment offers just as many hazards as the weapon-wielding maniacs running around it, as there are buttons to open airlocks in space stations or bring cargo containers crashing down, and there are even vehicles and mounted weaponry to get a hold of and use to dish out some real damage on your opponents.

The maps themselves are just as varied, and you could find yourself fighting on a pier avoiding a shark that comes to cause some trouble, before then moving to a precarious volcano or a rocket launchpad. We can imagine this will only get more maps as time goes on during the game's stay in Early Access, along with more weapons and customisation items (which we'd especially like to see more of).

The real beauty of this is that anyone can get stuck in, since the R1 and L1 (we played with a DualShock) correspond to punches, while R2 and L2 are the grabs that also let you pick up weapons and interact with things, with X letting you jump. Everything is really easy to dive into, and players quickly uncover surprises as they experiment with the environments and the weapons around them.

Havocado is essentially a great canvas to work with right now, and we just hope that Webble Games can build upon a game that's already a load of fun to play in Early Access. It's too early to say if it can rival the giants like Gang Beasts, but it made us laugh and scream, and that's as good a sign as any that it's doing the right things as a party game.