Hello, this is The Gemsbok, and today's topic is Awesomenauts,
a game developed by Ronimo Games and originally released in 2012.
The previous video was another somewhat heavy entry into this series, focusing on the
interpretation of pixel art and pixel art as an artistic movement. So, just like
when I followed up my heavier Papers, Please video with a lighter video essay
on Offspring Fling!, I will be making this one another lighter recommendation.
The game which I would like to recommend is Ronimo Games' 2012
side-scrolling platformer MOBA Awesomenauts. This game is a truly
one-of-a-kind experience, whose indie team has carved out a consistent niche
in the perennially monopolized MOBA genre. Anyone who is not impressed by
Awesomenauts' sustained success has a very short
memory. I can effortlessly think of numerous multiplayer games I've liked
and watched die for any number of reasons. But in the five years I've been
playing Awesomenauts, I've never waited over ten minutes for a full game of
players. Three minutes or less is typical, and that's true despite its first half
decade of existence not being free-to-play. Allow me to explain what
makes this title superior. I would have a hard time adequately expressing what an
amazing game Awesomenauts is, short of sitting you in front of the game and
having you play a couple rounds. In the interest of trying to communicate its
appeal, however, I will go over some of the particular details that put it in a
league of its own.
Awesomenauts is a three-versus-three online competitive game in which teams
compete to destroy an enemy team's base drill before their own is destroyed. The
drills are guarded by turrets, which can be attacked when they are distracted by
waves of droids. Player-characters can be upgraded in their base via resources
accumulated during play, and the field of play is entirely 2-dimensional.
Awesomenauts' unique fusion of platforming gameplay and MOBA gameplay
makes for a game with both a low skill floor and a high skill ceiling. This
means that it is trivially easy to get into the game, yet very difficult to
master. The ease of getting into it derives primarily from its platformer
elements, which most players will find intuitively familiar. The difficulty in
mastering it derives chiefly from its MOBA elements, with high-level
competitive play taking advantage of a broad skillset—requiring everything from
twitch reflexes to team coordination to deep knowledge of the characters'
abilities. Ronimo's design decisions in
Awesomenauts generally make for a less stressful, more enjoyable experience
all-around than is typical of competitive MOBA gameplay. If you've ever
liked the idea of a cooperative small team action game like League of
Legends or DotA 2, but felt that the actual prospect of training for
countless hours amidst harsh, unrelenting critics was not for you, then you should
definitely look into Awesomenauts. The ranking system is geared toward
accommodating all levels of play amicably, and its smaller community is by
far the nicest MOBA crowd of which I am aware. This is not to say that every
single solitary player of the game all over the world is a picture of
compassion, by any means; I personally think that there is something about the
mix of small-team cooperation and anonymity that practically guarantees
that shorter-tempered or younger players will lash out at their teammates or
their opposition. But nevertheless, it is the case in Awesomenauts that much or
all of the typical toxicity of other MOBAs is just not present. Part of the
attitude of the players may come from the attitude of the game itself, which
caters to a casual atmosphere through a light-hearted, vibrantly colored aesthetic,
with characters that are distinct and comedic. Furthermore, the matches run
shorter than most MOBAs—usually between 15 and 25 minutes. This allows most
players to channel any pent-up energy from a loss (or a win for that matter),
into the next round, rather than into their fellow players from the prior
round. Now, the attitude of the Awesomenauts community may have also
been, for many years, attributable to the slight barrier to entry provided by the
fact that the game had a one-time purchase price to play (a usual cost of
$10 that often went on discount). This meant that abusive players could not
simply come back immediately on another account with no penalties as in
free-to-play games. But now that it has itself gone free-to-play, it will be up
to a combination of the aforementioned aesthetics and design decisions, as well
as the momentum of the game's existing community, to maintain the amazingly low
toxicity of Awesomenauts player interactions. As to the
aforementioned aesthetic, like Team Fortress 2, Awesomenauts' visuals were
developed by pursuing a distinctive cartoonish artstyle, rather than chasing
realism. At the time of its release, it was portrayed as a Saturday morning
cartoon that you could play. This certainly captures the spirit of the
game, which boasts vibrant visuals and a roster of over 30 characters that have
an exceptional energy and personality to them. Each character has its own personal
theme song and killing spree track to match the uniqueness of their
personality and style, whether the character is a French assassin chameleon,
a scavenger techno-shaman, a manacled telepathic child, a British Admiral squid,
a pantsless space Marine, or something even more bizarre. And no matter how odd,
each character is given a backstory, a set of abilities, a movement speed, an
auto-attack, and even a jumping style that is almost completely unique to them. The
voice actors on the game range from professionals to Ronimo employees to
Youtube gaming personalities. For instance, John Bain (also known as
TotalBiscuit) puts in a wonderful performance as the voice of a tiny
old-school mob hustler named Vinnie. "HOW DO YA LIKE THAT, BOYS?"
Uh, side note: if any Ronimo team members are watching this, I
would gladly donate my voice to any part of the project if asked. Anyway, this
multiplicity of voices, songs, and mechanics results in characters that
feel as different as they play. And the many little touches, such as the drop pod
the player pilots when respawning, the map-specific critters, and the quirks to
the several maps (for example, one contains a giant worm trap, and another
contains a series of teleportation orbs) are all emblematic of Ronimo's
attention to detail, and further flesh out the world that the characters
inhabit. The result of all of these elements coming together with the
familiar feel of 2D platforming and the intense competition of MOBA gameplay is
a startlingly addictive creation that challenges and delights the player. As
for myself, playing with friends, with folks I've met in-game, and on my own,
across the past five years I have played this mild-mannered MOBA for well over a
thousand hours. And there are many that have played it much longer than me. When
I was at my most active in Awesomenauts, I spent stretches of time in the game's
top league (league one comprises the top 250 of the games tens of thousands of
players). These days, I hover around rank 1000 in league two, but I still enjoy the
game as much as ever—maybe more, with all of the technical improvements—and I find
myself coming back to it again and again.
The single biggest factor in the ongoing success of Awesomenauts is definitely
the continuous hardwork of a dedicated development team. The developers are
immensely supportive of the game, and put out large content patches about every
two months, similar to the now-long-gone golden age of Team Fortress 2. Ronimo
hosts semi-weekly streams about progress on the game. They take player
feedback, as well as aggregate upgrade and character selection data, so that
they can tweak and refine character balance. They constantly work on
polishing the graphics as well as the gameplay. At any given moment, the team is
working on some exciting aspect of the game—be it a new feature, a new character,
or just general improvement and management of the existing game. And you
can always see a full breakdown of every detail of each update in Ronimo's
official forums. Consistent and thorough patch notes might seem like a very minor
thing to praise, but as a fan of The Binding of Isaac, I've learned that patch
notes—however clearly beneficial to a game's community—are not always provided.
If you are an interested player or an aspiring game developer, by the way, I
would highly recommend also checking out the development blog run by Ronimo
Games programmer Joost van Dongen, which provides tons of insight into the trials,
tribulations, and iterative progress of creating a consistent and enjoyable
online multiplayer experience. The only valid complaint I've seen about
Awesomenauts is that one does occasionally encounter a match or a
player with a very bad connection. There are a couple of things you should
understand about this issue, though. First, you should know why this is the case:
this is a more complex problem than it may seem, and it results from the game's
peer-to-peer structure, its lower concurrent player count than bigger
multiplayer releases, and its reliance on Steam's multiplayer system. These issues
do exist, and can lead to frustrating connection and lag issues. But second, and
more importantly, these issues are a constant area of attention for the
developers, and—if you're playing in North America or Europe—then these
issues are much less common and much less dramatic than they used to be.
Having played this game for over four years now, it is remarkable how much
these problems have been improved despite the concurrent player count
remaining relatively stable. Last year, they rolled out a complete overhaul to
the matchmaking system called 'Galactron,' and—while there is some disagreement in
the community about its efficacy, particularly from less populous player
regions—I have personally found it to be nothing other than an unmitigated
improvement to the experience of playing the game. It is important to note, also,
that none of this is to do with optimization. The game is supremely well-
optimised. I used to play it on a laptop with integrated graphics, yet had no
performance issues whatsoever. And despite playing at max graphics
settings, the new Gemsbok PC never dips below 250 frames per second during a
match. Obviously I feel that the good far outweighs the bad and, regardless, when it
comes to matchmaking and netcode, Ronimo is always in the process of improving both.
All of the pieces of Awesomenauts—from its gameplay to its personality to its
community to the constant and considerable improvement from an
enthusiastic development team that has sustained it—sum together into
something remarkable. And as an aside (in case any of you were worried about this),
like all of the best free-to-play titles, the only elements that can be obtained
through money alone are purely cosmetic. So there really is no reason now for you
not to give it a chance, or to pick it back up if you played it long ago. There
is a forum post from a concerned fan on the Awesomenauts website that is simply
titled, "Is Awesomenauts dying?" This forum post is from 2013, now over 4
years old, and the popularity of the game actually rose to new heights
well after that post. It suffices to say that the answer to that question was,
'no,' and—with the game now being free-to-play—I am looking forward to
having an appreciable community of players in-game for years to come. People
have been predicting the demise of great online multiplayer games like Team
Fortress 2 and Awesomenauts for years. But the reality is that the players will
stay as long as the team behind the game keeps substantively improving the
players' experience, and continues to apply lessons learned from their own
missteps as well as from the failures of the many multiplayer games, big and small,
that they have already outlived. "AWESOMENAUTS!" "VICTORY!"