Killer Queen is one of the best times you can have at an arcade, but right now it’s pretty hard to find a game. It’s a lot tougher to distribute arcade machines around the country than it used to be, so you’ve probably never had the opportunity to play it unless you live near a major city in the United States. Developer Liquid Bit is aiming to change that with Killer Queen Black, a total overhaul of Killer Queen that will release for the Nintendo Switch and PC later this year.
For those who haven’t played the game, each match starts on a single symmetrical screen, and teams get one Queen and four Worker bears. You can win the game by one of three possible victory conditions: Military, Economic, or Snail. A military victory comes when your team manages to take out the opposing Queen three times in a single match; no small feat because she’s far faster and more deadly than anyone else. Economic victories involve bringing a specific number of berries back to your home base. Berries can also be spent at upgrade stations called Gates to make your Workers into Warriors, so you have to decide early on whether it’s worth spending this currency or saving it. Upgrade stations can be flipped by the queens, locking out bears that aren’t her color. Finally, there’s a slow-moving snail somewhere on each map, and managing to ride it all the way to your team’s side will result in victory. The player riding the snail is largely defenseless, though unwary players can be eaten by the snail if it’s being ridden by someone on the other team. The snail becomes a focal point for both teams and can’t be ignored forever, but getting it all the way across the map is probably the most difficult way to win a match.
As you can imagine there’s a lot going on in a match at any given time, but Killer Queen manages to keep players feeling like they’re in control even when chaos is going on all around them. The single screen and simple mechanics make it feel like a retro title, but the large HD screens and high player count couldn’t have been done in the arcade’s heyday. Killer Queen‘s arcade version pits two teams of up to five players against one another, and a good competitive match can easily get all ten people involved hollering at the screen. With so many moving parts and three potential victory conditions, games of Killer Queen always require players to adjust their strategies on the fly.
I had the opportunity to speak with three of Killer Queen Black‘s developers a few days ago, and they let me know more about the upcoming PC and Switch versions. Read on for the transcript of that interview.
Source: Destructoid Liquid Bit spoke with us about their arcade title, Killer Queen Black, coming to Nintendo Switch