Equal parts absolutely delightful and absolutely infuriating, turn-based strategy-RPG/surreal cartoon Pit People probably couldn’t have a chosen a worse time to lumber out of early access. The reason for that is Into The Breach. I came to Pit People straight off the back of my Into The Breach review, which means I’d just experienced a revelation in how brisk and elegant the age-old formula of taking turns to shuffle a small force of units across a set of tiles to bash or shoot enemies can be.

Because of that, it’s hard to forgive Pit People’s drawn-out, slow-motion wars of attrition. But it’s even harder to put it down, because it’s such a firehose of ideas, visual gags and spoken comedy outside of its cold and chewy tactical meat and potatoes.

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The Behemoth have charted a very strange course through the games industry. A small studio established by Flash-hub Newgrounds’ founders, they followed up their Metal Slug-esque Alien Hominid with Castle Crashers, a bright and breezy brawler. Next up was co-op platformer Battleblock Theater, a logical enough progression. I’m still not sure why they opted to make the direct sequel a hex-grid, turn-based strategy RPG, but I’m glad that they did.

After over a year in Early Access, Pit People is due for release, and will officially be 100% complete and ready to consume on March 2nd.

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Heavens to Murgatroyd, it’s only the weekly Steam charts! That is to say, the ten games which sold best on Steam last week.

After a string of backwards-looking weeks, it’s beginning to look a lot like 2017 at last.

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Every Monday we send Brendan on a cartoonish quest to kill or capture an early access game and force it to battle in the fighting pits. This week, the comic antics of Pit People [official site].>

Oh thank god, it s funny. Having missed Castle Crashers and BattleBlock Theater, previous games from The Behemoth, I didn t know what kind of comedy to expect. When I heard the South Parky voice of this game s antagonistic narrator (the same voice actor from their previous game), I feared the worst second-hand dick jokes, gateway satire, walking talking poops. I was relieved to feel my first lol, the result of a character s quick, unexpected death and the narrator’s flamboyant disregard. It s also a decent strategy game, which isn t a genre I d usually associate with giant purple bears bleeding onto the surface of the earth. But there you go. … [visit site to read more]

The Behemoth, the gang best known for cheery beat ’em up Castle Crashers, have announced that their new game Pit People [official site] will hit Steam Early Access on January 13th, 2017. Pit People is an adventure across a weird apocalyptic wasteland, recruiting troops, finding loot, and fighting in hexy turn-based tactical battles. And yes, as The Behemoth are angels for always supporting, it will have co-op. Why early access? They want to be sure Pit People is balanced and polished when it properly launches, and hope players can help with that. … [visit site to read more]