Slam Bolt Scrappers E3 Impressions

Slam Bolt Scrappers is the very first title by Fire Hose Games. If your a little wary about a game by a first time developer, don’t be. Slam Bolt Scrappers was one of the best PSN games on the show floor. Slam Bolt Scrappers is a puzzle game similar to Tetris, but with much more fast-paced action.

I played some 1 vs 1 and 2 vs 2 versus matches. Each team has a small core block they have to protect. You do this by placing blocks around it. You control a flying construction worker, who you use to place blocks and attack enemies. At the top of the screen are colored, flying creatures that will occasionally drop little bombs on your blocks. These creatures are also the source of the blocks for your grid. You simply fly up to them and punch them and they will turn into a block. You can attack multiple creatures and the blocks will just queue up in a line behind your character. You can place the blocks anywhere you want, and they will automatically fall until they land on something. You can even place a block in an empty space if its underneath other blocks. For example, if you have a straight piece hanging out over the edge of a square block, you can still place blocks under that overhang.

The purpose of placing blocks is not only to protect your core, but to make weapons as well. There are different colors of blocks. Make at least a 3 by 3 square of the same color and it will activate that weapon. The weapon will fire automatically for as long as it is there. Some of the weapons included missiles, lasers, a shield that would activate over your character, a device that would shoot drills onto enemy blocks which would have to be physically knocked off, and a snow throwing machine which would also have to be physically knocked away by the enemy player. Building bigger blocks will also increase the strength of that weapon. For example, a 3 by 3 missile block will shoot a single missile about every 7 seconds. A 4 by 4 missile block will shoot 2 missiles about every 6 seconds. A 5 by 5 missile block will shoot 3 missiles about every 5 seconds.

When you pick a match you pick which combination of blocks you want to use. I played a 2 vs 2 match with a snow, drill, missile combination. My side focused on building a big snow machine. We got a 5 by 5 block that just dumped tons of snow on the enemies side. They had to spend all their time flying around knocking away snow so that they could actually build their weapons. After a few minutes of this, the other team just decided to fly over and punch our characters until they died. We now had to wait about 5 seconds before we could respawn. While we were gone, they managed to destroy our snowball block and build some missile blocks. The match went on for a few more minutes before they were finally able to destroy our core block.

Slam Bolt Scrappers was a game I did not want to put down. The gameplay was fast-paced and fun. Slam Bolt Scrappers is a new take on puzzle games that is very refreshing to the genre. I will be looking forward to getting my hands on the game when it comes out in early 2011.

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