Staff – August 8, 2019 at 11:15 AM
Killer Queen is a platforming strategy game with three ways to win and, as its title suggests, two teams of five bees. Its frenzied, deceptively simple gameplay boasts an impressive amount of strategic depth and has even attracted a burgeoning esports community. Sound interesting? There’s a catch: You’ll have to track down one of under 70 publicly available arcade cabinets that house the game to play it.
That is, until later this year. Killer Queen Black, a newly imagined version of the game designed specifically for the home experience, is coming to PC. Unlike its arcade cabinet counterpart, Killer Queen Black will feature gameplay for up to eight players, a roster of special weapons, and online play. It’s good news for everyone from newcomers to Killer Queen pros; no longer will players have to make a pilgrimage to the nearest arcade with a Killer Queen cabinet to experience the game.
If there happens to be one near you, however, that shouldn’t stop you from making the trek to check the cabinet out in person. The massive cabinets, with their bright colors and striking geometrical chassises, are wonders to behold, and their natural magnetism is what allowed the game to have such a passionate fanbase in the first place.
The arcade version, after all, is what initially captured the attention of Matt Tesch, CEO of Liquid Bit, and his team. Liquid Bit are developing Killer Queen Black in tandem with Bumblebear Games, who were responsible for the original Killer Queen arcade game. “We were big fans of the arcade, so we started going to Logan Arcade here in Chicago, which is one of the first places that actually had a Killer Queen cabinet,” Tesch said. “We just really fell in love with it.”
Liquid Bit aren’t the only people to feel this way. Tesch explained that the cabinets have such strong centers of gravity that they tend to draw communities of players together. An esports scene emerged for the game and cities fortunate enough to host a cabinet continue to hold Killer Queen tournaments.
“A lot of the more serious arcade players actually travel from city to city,” Tesch said. The location-based nature of the esports scene, in fact, has only helped strengthen communities and encourage organizing. “They crash on each other’s couches,” Tesch noted.
Thus, one of the major challenges of designing Killer Queen Black was retaining the dynamism of the arcade original while still allowing players to play in the comfort of their home, without the spectacle of the arcade.
Firstly, the game places a lot of emphasis on teamwork and communication. The Killer Queen arcade cabinets are actually two five-person machines, each with their own screen, connected to each other. One person on each team plays as the Queen, while the other four members play as Drones.
Killer Queen is especially unique in that it supports three distinct yet interlocked winning conditions: a Military Victory, an Economic Victory, and a Snail Victory. The Military Victory requires a team to kill the enemy queen three times, the Economic Victory requires a team to collect berries for their hive, and the Snail Victory requires a team member to ride a snail into a basket on the other side of the map.
While Killer Queen Black still utilizes these mechanics, it contains a whole host of new features, as well. Many of these changes are responses to careful considerations about porting the game from the arcade cabinet to an entirely different context.
One big change is the switch from 5v5 to 4v4. Surprisingly, this change had less to do with team compositions or technological limitations than it had to do with the game’s display. “When you're playing in the arcade, you're standing a foot and a half away from a 60-inch TV and can follow your character fairly easily,” Tesch said. “When designing for the home experience, we obviously had no control over what display our players will be using. They could be playing it on a handheld device all the way up to a 60-inch TV that they're sitting 20 feet away from.”
To combat this, Liquid Bit and Bumblebear decreased the max team size, redesigned the game’s maps, and made the assets much bigger so that they’re more visible. Players can also play with bots in “Quick Match” mode, filling out the gaps in a team if short on people. It’s an experience that’s much more well-suited for a home environment, in which you might not have a chance to hail a stranger over to complete your team.
Inputs and controls posed another challenge in translating Killer Queen to a home context. Killer Queen was designed with button-mashing in mind, which is a style of gameplay that isn’t especially comfortable for players using a controller or keyboard-and-mouse setup. “It doesn't feel good to lack that gigantic button,” Tesch explained.
Thus, Liquid Bit had to completely rethink the pacing and positionality of the game’s combat. Instead of only using a sword, players can now select three additional weapons: the morning star, the laser gun, and the stinger. Each weapon has unique benefits and drawbacks, and players will have to work together to synergize their choices.
Moreover, it encourages more thoughtful button-pressing and different approaches to positioning. It’s an especially creative way of adding variety and depth to the game while solving a critical design challenge.
Killer Queen Black is shaping up to be not only a worthy adaptation of its arcade predecessor but a game that sits in its own, entirely new category. “Everyone asks me: ‘What is Killer Queen Black like?’” Tesch said. “I can't think of another game that's close. It’s definitely genre-defining.”
Whether or not you’ve had a chance to play Killer Queen in person, Killer Queen Black is worth making time for. With both ranked and unranked game modes, it works for both casual hangouts and serious, competitive play. You’re not going to want to miss out on the game that built a national esports scene out of a handful of arcade cabinets.
Killer Queen Black will be available for PC later this year.
Recommended specs:
- OS: Windows® 10 (64-bit required)
- RAM: 8GB of system memory
- Storage: 3GB of available space
- DirectX: Version 11
