#swiggins

A friend recently got me back into Awesomenauts. It’s a game I wrote about a little while ago, and I’m both amazed and impressed at the dedication of the playerbase and - shockingly - the ease with which I could get into a full match even though it isn’t even in the top 99 currently most-played games on Steam. Well, yeah, I do have to log in during the early afternoon Pacific Time and it helps to have something to alt-tab to and do for about two to three minutes while people join (if you force-start a game while there are still open slots [that then get filled by bots] you are a bad person), and of course it really helps to have a little tolerance for mediocre latency, but I’d written this game off as pretty much dead a while ago.

You’ve got to understand, this isn’t because Awesomenauts is a bad game. Awesomenauts is, despite appearances, a MOBA (lane-pusher, Lords Management sim, DOTA-like, you know what I mean), and like any MOBA there’s a lot of complexity and subtlety to playing this game that isn’t immediately apparent. This combined with a fairly small and dedicated playerbase means that this game’s multiplayer community is increasingly difficult to get into without someone to guide you, I’d argue even more so than Dota 2 or League of Legends since this game doesn’t have nearly enough players at the newbie skill level. Then again, on the flip side it also means that you’re less likely to encounter any of the stereotypical MOBA toxicity, since there’s a lot more incentive for this community to retain new players.

It’s a good game, though, and one that’s just gotten better over time. Many of the issues that I’ve mentioned in my article have been addressed - maps have been tweaked, AI Station 404 was completely reworked, balance has shifted, Voltar is finally interesting to play - and new characters have been introduced: seven so far, and some of them are even available to players who haven’t bought the Starstorm expansion pack. This game really does deserve a lot more attention than it’s got, if only for its radical reinterpretation of the MOBA formula, but also for the fact that it’s both fast-paced and action-oriented as well as a game that rewards strategic thinking, teamwork, and planning. It’s also very colorful (literally and metaphorically) and it’s got a ton of character. Did I ever mention that every character in this game has their own theme tune? The one here is for Admiral Swiggins, the swaggiest squid admiral to ever drink tea and initiate fights by hitting people with an anchor.

Seriously, Swiggins is the best.

Play Awesomenauts.

Admiral Swiggins !