PAX East 2014 Hands-On: Woah Dave!
If you had a good time at PAX East, you probably hadn’t played this game.
Games available to play at PAX East were generally easy to play, or at least set to one of the easiest phase so not to frustrate attendees. But with the “kill-the-monsters” indie game Woah Dave!, however, insists on paying homage to the old-school games, namely the stereotype that old games are hard.
In this game, you control a cap-and-overalls-wearing character named Dave and throw stuff at one-eyed aliens then take the pennies they leave behind. This sounds easy. This should be easy. But it’s not easy.
Out of the two things you can throw at the aliens, one is the egg the aliens hatch from. But you can’t hold on to the eggs for too long because they will hatch and kill you instantly. Skulls can trump both aliens and eggs but it can also explode and take you with it. The best option is the screen-clearing Woah block, which will give just enough time to collect the coins before the one-eyed baddies come back to attack you.
The overall look of Woah! is inspired by the graphics of 8-bit console games, but doesn’t exactly adhere to the limits of those systems. The sprites created for Dave and the aliens are deceptively impressive.
Gaijin Games plans to release Woah Dave! to iOS, Android, and Steam.
