For people who were lucky enough to own an N64 back in the day, Screencheat is a true nostalgia bomb. Pulling inspiration from some true classics, it’s everything you forgot you loved about games of that era, with truly original point of difference. It’s also some of the most pure multiplayer fun I’ve had in years.
Developed by homegrown independent talent Samurai Punk, Screencheat is a multiplayer FPS that splits your screen into four quadrants. Each quadrant shows what each player is up to at that precise moment. It looks exactly the way you remember GoldenEye 007 looking. However, where looking at other players screens in GoldenEye made your friends think you were worse than Hitler, Screencheat forces you to leverage this technique to win the game. Why?
Everyone is invisible. The only way to know where they are is to look at their screens.
Genius.
It puts a unique spin on a genre that is becoming increasingly overblown with crazy graphics and complicated level design by dialing everything back. Levels are self-contained and quite open. GoldenEye is, again, an influence here but the devs have also taken some ideas from Quake 3, like launchpads that fire you across the level.
Though simple in their design, and very easy to find your way around thanks to clear colour coding some are a bit big if you’re playing with any less than the full complement of four players. Playing with two players was actually quite difficult. Even with the ability to see where we both were, it took a while to actually get near enough to shoot.
There’s a truly massive array of weapons available to you from the jump, and you can select a new one every time you respawn. We didn’t deviate too far from the default blunderbuss as it had a surprising range and was able to one-shot other players most of the time.
With weapon-balancing and new maps coming through to keep the experience rolling, Screencheat could easily become a new LAN Party favourite. I had an absolute blast with this. Simple in it’s design, but delivers big old-school flavoured fun. And it’s only $15 on Steam? What are you waiting for? Get it and support great Australian content!
Review Score: 8.0 out of 10
Highlights: Simple premise, super fun
Lowlights: Levels a bit big with less than 4 players
Developer: Samurai Punk
Publisher: Surprise Attack Games
Released: 21 October, 2014
Platform: PC
Reviewed on PC
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