The Rock the Paper and the Scissors

High noon showdowns that take place in front of the town saloon are scenes that has been reenacted over and over again to the point where they stopped being thrilling.

Now, how about a spin on that. Have the outlaw and the do-gooder on top of moving trains. And instead of shooting guns at the count of ten, they go rock, paper, scissors on the count of three.

The Rock the Paper and the Scissors is a prototype that was built during Lundum Dare 32 under the An Unconventional Weapon theme. With that in mind, you can see how good this game concept actually is.

You play the role of Lefty, a bounty hunter who sets off to take down the toughest banids from that side of the land. In the idea that real men don’t use guns, every battle is carried out through a game of rock-paper-scissors and the loser gets vaporized.

Not only is the idea great, the visuals and audio exceed expectations. Sure, it’s a pixel graphics game and we see tons of them surfacing but the difference between them is in the polishing and this one shines under the setting sun.

When it comes to playing it, things in The Rock the Paper and the Scissors are pretty straightforward. You have three keys for gameplay which obviously tell the bounty hunter which of the three stances to use.

It’s not a guessing game, the bandits will hint you on what they plan to do but as you advance, their sequences of moves get complicated. At the count of three becomes at the count of eight and you will need to memorize every single move and counter it as the game rules dictate.

Rock beats scissors, scissors beat paper, paper beats rock but if you mess up, you lose a point and if you lose all three, it’s game over.

The game is still in development, what you have here is merely the materialization of an idea, and a good one at that. It’s totally playable, it will annoy you at times but it’s still good fun. Keep up with development news by following the team @bogdan_rybak, @Helgram, @MajorMcDoom, @citystreetlight.