This year is my first Pax East and my first appointment at the convention was at the Behemoth booth during the media hour/press breakfast. The Behemoth were showing off a few of their games but the game that had my attention was Pit People. The booth had plenty of cabinets running the game, both with solo mode and co-op mode.
The co-op mode was a nice change of pace being able to play with other people. I didn’t stay on the co-op too long because there weren’t too many people playing so I jumped right into the solo mode. This felt like a night and day change. It also was an Xbox One to Arcade Cabinet jump and I felt the controls in the arcade cabinet were the better way to play the game.
Pit People plays like a turn based, grid style attack game where you need to use strategy to win each battle. You might need certain characters/weapons to defeat the enemy in question. You will need to study the locales and see what the best way strategy for victory is. Like in any grid based attacking game, you’ll only be able to move a certain amount of spaces per round and you’ll need to cover your back by playing good defense as well.
You’ll also have the chance to customize your fighters/team during your crusade so be on the lookout for items/tools. During the demo, you find out that mallets do extra damage to enemies wearing helmets so that adds to the strategy of battle. There are all kinds of fighters that have all kinds of strengths and weaknesses and it will be your job while playing to discover what works and what doesn’t in battle.
One interesting feature was it looked like you can traverse through the landscape before you get into the grid-based battles. Something like doesn’t happen too often in turn based games; that’s usually done with the help of cut scenes or minor transitions. Pit People has an interesting cast of characters that any fan of the turn-style, grid-based battle games would want to take a look at.