Kill the Plumber Is a Multi-Award Winning Filipino Game That Will Hit Steam on January 1, 2016
Ever wondered what it would be like to turn the tables on a certain super-popular plumber? On January 1, 2016, Kill The Plumber — a multi-awarded indie game from Philippine development outfit Keybol — will drop on Steam. You should totally get it.
The game is a parody of the platformer genre where players take control of the enemy in order to kill a jumping, fireball-chucking, vaguely Italian plumber hell-bent on stomping through your fellow goons to save the princess.
It was nominated for Most Innovative Game at Casual Connect Asia last May 2015. Bari Silvestre and his team over at Keybol were then picked one of 10 finalists out of 380 submissions at the Independent Games Festival China. There, the Filipino developers showcased their games to much applause last October, winning the Excellence in Design Award in the said event.
Kill the Plumber has also received awards for Best in Gameplay and Best in Innovation from the local ICT Creative Awards held by the Department of Science and Technology, together with the Animation Council of the Philippines and Game Developers Association of the Philippines.
Kill the Plumber is an iconoclastic game. Fans of retro games will recognize the (copyright-safe) versions of everyone’s favorite 2D goomba-stomping plumber though instead of taking charge of the “hero”, players are tasked with killing him in increasingly difficult challenges.
The game meshes mechanics well as controlling classic video game bad guys feels mechanically logical: On some levels, you control a pillar whose singular purpose is to crash down and squish the plumber. Only this time: you are in control.
After playing with the beta version of the game, one can feel the attention to detail poured in by the developers. Puzzles and challenges scale well, allowing for people to gradually ease into the game. At it’s highest levels, the puzzles become devious as not only do your goons and minions gain different abilities, but the plumber himself receives power-ups such as the ability to throw fire and predict your movements to time his jumps.
But my personal favorite has to be the opening comic of the game. In a short, three panel splash screen, the video game poses the question: If a certain Nintendo hero is truly a hero, then why is he stomping on the actual denizens of the Kingdom? It’s a brilliant lamps-hading of Mario conspiracies that have graced the internet since time-immemorial.
With local game developers receiving more support from private and governmental institutions, both video games and eSports industries in the country are receiving accolades both local and abroad. Kill The Plumber is fittingly iconoclast; a parody of a popular game that dares to stand on its own legs. Much like the Philippines and it’s relationship to the pursuit of gaming.
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