Hot Shot Burn Early Access Preview

Ultimate Friendship Destroyer
Hot Shot Burn Preview

Hot Shot Burn is a great top-down arena party brawler with a large slab of humor. The characters are diverse and hilarious, while the maps have their own quirks. There are “mutations” or pick-ups that can change the tide of fights along with unique hazards per map that can lead to many interesting deaths. This is our Hot Shot Burn early access preview.

I mainly played Chuck, which is kind of a blitz character, utilizing his movement to quickly close the gap on players and blast them, but it leads to a lot of accidental deaths. You will get a lot of laughs out of accidental deaths when one of your friends or yourself, is trying too hard. Blaming hazards on the map for your death becomes very commonplace. It was very enjoyable with their end-session scoring, as the smack talk just naturally comes out. Everyone can find a character to enjoy, with each one having a unique ability. Unlocks in the game are well-paced, so you don’t have to feel like your “grinding” to unlock aspects and skins, it just comes naturally.

Hot Shot Burn Preview 1

Combat

Combat is simple, it doesn’t take much to jump in and start some carnage. Every character has a unique weapon that can be anything from bouncy balls to a single shot laser. All characters also have a unique special that is on a cool down, from invisibility to point-blank AOE spikes. This leads to many interesting combinations based on the what the map hazards are. There is an underlying cat and mouse flow to tactics, where you want to chase down or bait opponents to put them in unfavorable positions. I didn’t get to try all the characters but it doesn’t take very long to learn how to play them well. Chuck was a challenge at first, but once I learned how far his charge ability moved, it was easier and easier to gauge when/how to use it. It’s all about interactions and baiting your friends to their death, so combat is a nice mix of simple but not too simple.

Conclusion

There is a nice mix of maps and characters, but if they can keep cranking out interesting hazards/characters, this game will always be refreshing to play. I do hope they add in some alternative options for play per character, to keep players guessing. Having alternate specials to unlock would be awesome.I enjoyed the matches with my friends, but when they were unavailable to play, I had a hard time finding people to play with.I hope that their online play will be more robust, but with Steam soon offering a way to share games, I could see this game being a staple of any game library.  Thank you to the Artifex Mundi for allowing us to try this game out. Game keys were provided to facilitate this review. Friendships were ruined, but we all had a good laugh.

Positives

  • Great controls
  • Easy for anyone to pick up
  • Great way to settle friendly disputes

Needs Improvement

  • Very limited online play
  • Could use more characters

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