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Armed and Gelatinous Preview – Frenetic Arcade Action

By: Dan
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Armed and Gelatinous caught my eye immediately with the trailer below. Two kids, walking into an arcade, 80’s nostalgia everywhere. Combine that with frenetic arcade gameplay, blobs in space, and the competitive nature of Armed and Gelatinous, and I immediately knew it was a game I had to go check out at PAX East.

The Game

Armed and Gelatinous is a frenzied multiplayer arcade space shooter made by the folks over at Three Flip Studios. In the game, you play a gelatinous blob who has to dash around space, collecting weapons from crates, and disbanding your enemies.

The core gameplay loop is insanely fun. Four players select their blobs, jump into a level in space, and get after it. Any of the twelve different weapons you collect from the crates sticks to the area of your blob that you collect it with. This means that you have to be strategic with picking up weapons, as your blob is a circle.

The more weapons you pick up, the larger and slower your blob gets. This allows you to do a ton of damage, maintain a lot of health, and monopolize playing space. Conversely, the smaller blobs will be nimbler as they target the spaces on your blob not covered with weapons. This soft underbelly can cause you a swift demise if you are not as skilled as your opposition.

Another cool mechanic in Armed and Gelatinous is the ability to dash. Not only does dashing allow you more freedom to move about the screen, but it can actually be used to kill an opponent. By charging the dash, and perfectly timing it, you can hit the soft side of an enemy blob and kill it instantly. Beware; a frame perfect counter-dash by your opponent will actually cancel your attack.

Hands-on with Armed and Gelatinous

I was given the chance to play Armed and Gelatinous on either a console or a custom arcade cabinet; I obviously chose the arcade cabinet. What’s cool about the arcade cabinet is that they are a real product being sold to barcades. You yourself can have one for about 7,000 USD or about 11,000 USD if you want internet connectivity. I was close to inquiring about a payment plan but decided to dive into the game.

The game plays exactly how I wanted it to. Everything is fast-paced, hectic, and fun. When a strategy plays out, you feel great about it. Conversely, when nothing is working how you want it to, it can be frustrating. That is the heart of an arcade game, though, and Armed and Gelatinous nails it.

Every little bit you improve feels amazing. I had the fortune (or misfortune) of playing with the folks who have been working on the game for half a decade. The learning curve is always steep when you play the experts. That’s okay, though; it made it so much more gratifying when I got my first kill.

My Impressions

After two rounds of Armed and Gelatinous, I was hooked. I could have hung out with the guys and played all day. While the objective in the standard mode is always the same, kill the other blobs, each round can play out wildly different. Someone can pull together a huge lead, get killed, have all of their guns taken, and be on the back foot the rest of the round.

Additional modes for the game exist, and new ones have been announced, including food fight, dodgeball, and target practice. This means that you should have plenty to do when Armed and Gelatinous launches in Q3 of this year. Armed and Gelatinous will be available on Playstation 4, Xbox One, and Steam this year.

I absolutely recommend you throw it on your wish list and check it out!

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