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Crash Bandicootis once more taking a break from its singleplayer games to crash into multiplayer extravaganzas. However,instead of kart racing, we have a unique 4v4 concept, where each team has to gather Wumpas, the series' iconic fruit. And we got a new trailer, revealing the game’s release date, June 20, as well as a closed Beta for those who pre-order it, from April 20 to 24.
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Thanks to this trailer and a private session between the developers and Youtuber Canadian Guy Eh, we have a lot more details about what the game is going to be like, how characters work, and what to expect.
What Is The Game?
Before talking about new details, perhaps a refresher is important. After all, they’re doing a type of game that is unique which, according to content creatorCanadian Guy Eh, they called a “4v4 strategic multiplayer platformer.”
Each team has to collect Wumpa fruits scattered throughout the map and deliver them to a large base area each team has called banks. When you reach the bank, it takes a few seconds for the fruits to be dropped, and then they’re all accounted for. You can also attack the enemy team, and each attack makes them lose wumpa. However, once they’re delivered to the bank, there isn’t anything you can do about it, or at least that’s what it seems to be. The team that reaches 2,000 wumpas first, wins.
You also have relics spread throughout the arena, and you may collect them and use them to activate power-ups for your team or create hazards for your enemies. Each of these power-ups requires a specific number of relics, and your team can help out fill that number. It’s unclear whether the enemy team can swoop in and activate the power-up that you already started if they give the remaining relics to do so, but that is a possibility. But these are the base rules we have so far.
Characters And Soft Roles
The game will offeran interesting roster of charactersto choose from and play with, but unlike other games such as Crash Team Racing or Crash Bash, each character will have exclusive moves, making their gameplay more unique. They’re also separated into roles, though these roles aren’t very obligatory to follow, thus being named Soft Roles.
You have characters like Tawna, who excel at gathering wumpas; characters like Dingodile, who are better at hunting enemies and making them lose their fruits; and characters such as Coco, who are better at collecting Relics (more on that later). How these will play out exactly, we still don’t know, but it’s always nice to have gameplay variety through the characters.
Powers
When choosing a character to play with, you also choose a special item that you can use during the fight. These are unrelated to the characters themselves, so you can mix characters and powers according to your preference.
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During the trailer, we can see a Gasmoxian soldier who attacks nearby enemies with an area attack, and a fridge that heals you and your nearby allies. Other powers were mentioned during the private session, such as instantly getting a lot of wumpas.
Gem Pads
A staple of the series, Gem Pads are gem-based platforms. However, these won’t take you to secret areas - not in this game, at least. Instead, there will be a group of Gem Pads relatively close to one another in the arena, and jumping over them will trigger a percentage bonus to the wumpas you and your teammates deliver for a time.
It’s unclear how long the bonus last, but the percentage is based on the number of platforms. If there are three Gem Pads together, then you’ll get a 30 percent bonus by hitting them all, for example. So going after them is a good way to turn the tides of the match.
Maps And Relics
So far, we have seen three different maps: Tiki Towers, Just Beachy, and Calamity Canyon. The first two are beach areas, though they still look very distinct from one another, while the latter is based on the desert levels from Crash 4. They all feature a bank for each team, Gem Pads, wumpas to collect, crates with wumpas, Relics, and Relic pads or stations.
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Each of these Relic stations can give you a power-up, and they each have a number above them. These number indicates how many Relics are necessary to activate them. We see in the trailer a Beach Ball, where you can get inside it and run over your enemies with it.
Each map also offers a very powerful power-up that requires many Relics to activate. Just Beachy gives you a second bank to store wumpa, Calamity Canyon has Oxide’s ship, who follows enemies with a laser beam, and Tiki Towers has Uka Uka, who blasts the arena with meteors.
Customization
Though not shown during the gameplay trailer, this is a topic that is talked about in the aforementioned private session. The game will offer aBattle Pass-like systemto unlock cosmetics. Apparently, that doesn’t include unlocking characters, but that is not certain.
So far, there seem to have banners, skins, and victory music to play during the end for your cosmetic unlocks. We can also see through the game’s HUD that there are emotes. Emotes are often a successful form of monetization in online games, so they could be bought or unlocked through the Battle Pass system. All that said, there isn’t a lot of information on the topic at the moment.
