The Fromto demo is a lot of scribbly, messy party platformer fun
I doodle, I die, I doodle again!
Scribbly party puzzle platformer Fromto isn't out until later this year, but its dad-and-his-kids dev team just rolled out a demo on Steam to test your friendships. Reminding me of anarchic platformer Transformice (although Studio Erikson cite Ultimate Chicken Horse, Worms and Trackmania as inspirations), it's a local or online multiplayer platform racer. Drive your bouncy car around a 2D maze, hit checkpoints, then to the finish line. Unfortunately the track is incomplete, and after reach round of failures, players get a chance to place roads and traps to help and hinder.
From the little bit I've played of the demo, this game has the potential to get very messy, very quickly. Even pieces placed on the track in order to aid yourself can easily backfire thanks to the squirrely movement physics. As well as spikes, water and other instant death obstacles, it's possible to be wiped by landing your car upside down, which is easy to do if you lose your grip on a loop. Your sole advantage on the driving side of things is infinite wall-jumps. Mashing the jump button while against any wall lets you climb it in a way that makes no sense, but does look funny.
Still, the platforming is only half the game. The other half is turning the doodled track into an even bigger mess. The demo contains two levels (one locked initially) and a bunch of unlockable building components. There's a lot of strange pieces that won't make sense at first that you get through random crates, but you can buy basic road segments at the shops floating around each track. I get the feeling the skill ceiling for this could be pretty high. While the full version of the game will include solo challenges, this demo feels like a free self-contained party game. Give it a try.
Fromto and its Party Crash demo are here on Steam, and bring some friends, local or online. The full game due out later this year, and published by Headup.