Jumping and shooting have been two of the primary actions in video games since the medium’s inception, and yet they’ve rarely been smooshed together — certainly not with the hilarious, maddening verve of Shotgun Cop Man. The only other example that springs to mind right now is rocket jumping in Quake, and that started life as an exploit, it wasn’t an intended part of the game design.
Not so in Shotgun Cop Man. Shooting to jump is the concept this entire game revolves around, and it’s exploited with great ruthlessness and wit by DeadToast across the levels available to play in the game’s demo. The demo is available now and will be featured in next week’s Steam Next Fest, which runs from Feb. 24 to March 3.
The latest from My Friend Pedro developer DeadToast Entertainment is a minimalist 2D platformer about a bald, stick-limbed, slab-chested cop called… well, you can guess. Shotgun Cop Man is on a mission to enter hell and arrest Satan. He has a shotgun and a handgun, which you can aim with the right stick and fire with the left and right triggers respectively. Shotgun Cop Man is not the most athletic sort, and can only waddle left and right relatively slowly – but if he fires his gun at the floor, he flies upward. The handgun produces a little hop; the shotgun a massive leap.
It’s a brilliant idea as it is, but DeadToast cleverly iterates on it to produce a tricksy-but-exhilarating form of movement. The guns reload automatically every time Shotgun Cop Man stands on the ground. You can chain up to three shotgun blasts, changing your aim as you go to send our hero on pinwheeling arcs through the air. Firing the handgun while airborne makes Shotgun Cop Man hover. The best tactic for dealing with enemies — little red devils carrying pistols — is usually to launch yourself into the air with the shotgun and then blast away with the pistol from midair, gracefully floating through their hail of bullets.
The level design is simple, geometric, and devious, studded with lethal buzzsaws. The graphics are functional, but the joy is in the game’s exuberant physics and chaotic but precise carnage — it plays very much like a ballistic Super Meat Boy. In a nod to the classic Nintendo platformer Yoshi’s Island, your heart floats off if you get hit, and you have a chance to recover if you can reach it. You can pick up tasty handgun upgrades too, like a machine pistol or mini-shotgun, that enhance both your firepower and your power of flight.
Shotgun Cop Man quickly gets very hard, but it’s so much fun to control that it will always bring you back. Oh, to be Shotgun Cop Man, blasting himself into the sky, sailing elegantly into hell.
Shotgun Cop Man is set for release on Nintendo Switch and Windows PC in 2025.
The post You are Shotgun Cop Man, and you shoot your guns to jump appeared first on Polygon.
