Denshattack! is brave enough to ask, ‘What if you could do a kickflip as a train?’ Now, it’s unclear whether anyone was actually asking this question, but it sure is brave enough to ask it. Anyway, we can finally find out the answer to that via its Steam Next Fest demo, which is ‘You’d crash about as much as you’d expect but it’s sick as hell.’
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The pitch is this: Most of humanity’s huddling under super-safe eco domes after the climate crisis ravaged the earth. All except for you, a train driver delivering ramen who finds out that there’s a new punk movement building—a movement entirely based on doing totally tubular, OSHA-violating stunts.
As for how it plays, it’s a blend between the 3D Sonic games (the good ones), Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, and EA’s Skate. Despite being quite literally on rails, Denshattack! has more than enough variety to keep you going even in its first couple of levels.
You can swap tracks, jump, and slam down to avoid deadly track obstacles. You can drift-turn around corners to build up speed, you can honk your horn to scare off bats or signal gates to open, and you can perform tricks with your right stick (you should be playing this on a controller) with movements a la Skate.
That’s just what the demo levels give to you. Dip into the trick park, and you’ll see that Denshattack! also has rail-grinding, wall-riding, tunnels, manuals—and yes, multi-track drifting—into the mix. What this produces is a surprisingly freeform movement system, with tons of tracks to flip between that fly at you with alarming speed.
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Denshattack! has a lot in common with speedrunning games, in that a lot of getting good at a level involves memorising the layout. And while the obstacles can come at you a bit fast, crashing your train doesn’t set you that far back, allowing you to get familiarity with whichever bit of the circuit you’re having issues with.
As far as vibes go, it’s all looking very Jet Set Radio, and that’s a compliment—colourful, cel-shaded punk absurdity, adorable character designs, and a zany attitude which, at one point, saw me joyriding a Ferris wheel into an active volcano. If the full game keeps up this level of creativity, it’s sure to be a riot. You can play the Denshattack! demo for free on Steam.
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