When It Hits the Fan Demo

For those who lived through the SNES era and enjoyed all the popular games of the time, shoot ‘em ups seem like a distant memory, even if there are still some games released even today. However, very few seem to capture the essence of the genre like Contra or other classic games did, mainly because they concentrate too much on keeping the players happy instead.

When It Hits the Fan seems to care very little about the players, given the fact that it goes to great lengths to make the experience as punishing as possible. In essence, the game is a retro sidescrolling shooter in which you have to get to the end of each level alive and well, while killing hundreds of enemies in between. It may not be a very enlightening experience, but then again shoot ‘em ups are hardly the kind of games to teach you about life.

As such, your only goal is to kill everything that moves and use the best weapons you can find to ease your task. The enemies spawn from various structures around the map, so it’s important to neutralize these structures, otherwise you can keep shooting for a whole day without results. On top of that, these enemies come in all shapes and sizes, so it’s important to pay attention to that as well.

Other elements make the gameplay even more exciting as well, such as the fact that you can pick up power-ups and become a lot stronger for a few seconds. You can also aim for the high score and keep an eye on the timer, because there’s also a clock running in the background. Moreover, you can even join forces with a friend and play in the local co-op mode to try and survive together instead of alone.

Since everything is designed to look and feel like something you might have played on a SNES, it’s only natural that When It Hits the Fan looks a bit old and raggedy at this point. That’s not a bad thing at all, at least if you are ready to accept this fact from the start. The controls are very accurate and on point, so at least you won’t be able to blame them for your mistakes.

In the end, When It Hits the Fan is quite the fun shooter and it appears to have a dedicated development team, so it would be nice to see more of the game in the future. Hence, you can support them by backing the game’s Kickstarter campaign, or by voting for it on Steam Greenlight.