Cobalt

"Cobalt is an action game of running, jumping, rolling, shooting, throwing, dancing, hacking, rolling, flying, sliding, climbing, looting, deflecting, racing, pinata-ing, passing, scoring... and even more rolling! "

- Official description of Cobalt

Cobalt is a Platform Shooter by Oxeye Game Studio in collaboration with Mojang and music by Anosou Music. The game is currently in open alpha, but has a surprisingly high quality for such. You play Cobalt, a kind of cyborg called a Metalface, running and rolling around a map shooting things.

Currently has four playable game types, with at least four more planned.
 * Deathmatch: Sorted into teams, you and an assortment of other players and bots try to rake in the most kills.
 * Capture The Plug: Two teams square off trying to get the plug back to your own plug.
 * Survival: You and another player fight off escalating waves robots and local wildlife.
 * Bounty: Similar to Deathmatch, but the goal is to gather as much Vendor Trash as possible and convert it to Volts. First to reach the goal wins!
 * Defense
 * Challenge
 * Cooperative
 * Campaign

Can be pre-ordered here.


 * Abnormal Ammo: Matter weapons shoot some kind of superheated matter pellets For Massive Damage. Oddly enough, this is explicitly different from the ammo used by Plasma weapons.
 * Artificial Stupidity: During Capture The Plug mode, your bots will sometimes have the Plug and stand next to your station without entering it, thereby losing you a point when they get shot. They will also wander about the map doing nothing while you get swarmed by the enemy bots who work together to take you down.
 * Awesome but Impractical: Most weapons are safe and easy to use, and even the most expensive ones have some use. But the Blaster Gun can also kill you when you fire it with its large splash radius.
 * BFG: Too many to count, but the RPG, Assault Weapons and Blasters are pretty obvious.
 * Blinded by the Light: In a game with flash grenades, this had to come about. It adds a bloomy-blurry white blob in the area it went off and prevents your auto-aim from working at all.
 * Brain In a Jar: All Metalfaces are outright said to be this, as they have had their human brains transplanted into a robot body.
 * Bullet Time: On by default, as most projectiles and attacks move far too fast for any conceivable reaction.
 * Call a Smeerp a Rabbit: Shrooms are small creatures with shells that punch you and live in tiny houses. Spike Birds are rotund creatures with invulnerable beaky faces and can explode a hail of spikes from their backside.
 * Camera Screw: Quite often when playing with more than one person; the screen tries and fails to compensate when they stray too far from one another.
 * Cherry Tapping: Punching to death anything but Shrooms or Birds can be this. Especially true against Hamsters and Predators.
 * Corrupt Corporation: The organization that gives you your shiny new body is implied to be this. At least they don't discriminate.
 * Competitive Balance: Based on what upgrades and weapons you choose for your character, you can take any number of paths.
 * Jack of All Stats: You start off as this, and have to work your way into other categories.
 * Glass Cannon: Buy some heavy weapons and focus on upgrading them to become this.
 * Fragile Speedster: Buy the jet shoes or learn advanced rolling to become this.
 * Stone Wall: Buy the shield belt to become this.
 * Lightning Bruiser: If you have done all of the above then you can be considered this.
 * The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Bots with more advanced AI, mostly Metalfaces, tend to make liberal use Bullet Time, a feature normally only usable by players. In addition, they can react to things players would never be able to react to, even with Bullet Time.
 * Couch Gag: Scrolling on the bottom of the main menu are quotes and blurbs making fun of many things, from Skyrim to Minecraft to workplace lawsuits.
 * Debug Room: Accessible during any part of the game, via the F2 key.
 * Deflector Shields: The Shield Belt gives you a personal force field that blocks powerful Matter and Plasma shots, and an unlimited number of Slugger shots. The more powerful shots destroy the shield and requires Sheild Batteries and time in order to recharge. Also more literally, Deflector is one the the upgrades you can buy for it, allowing it to deflect explosives as well.
 * Barrier Warrior: The upgrade Discharger makes your shield explode outward when it is spent, propelling enemies away from you and damaging them.
 * Department of Redundancy Department: The quote mentions rolling several times. There might be a reason for this.
 * Double Jump: After running for a second, you build up a charge in your feet that speeds you up a small amount. You can then use this to make a second jump in the air. Can even be turned into a triple jump if you know how to time your roll-punches. If you know how to use the Phaser right, this can be turned into a leap that rivals proper use of the Jet Shoes.
 * Elaborate Equals Effective: Most gun upgrades are visible once applied.
 * Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: The interaction of invincibility from rolling and shield belts plays like this with Slugger, Matter and Energy weapons. Each of these also interacts differently with bots and animals.
 * Energy Weapons
 * Flawed Prototype: The Matter Prototype. Cheaper than the Army or Police versions, but is not upgradeable and has a very small clip size.
 * Friendly Fireproof: You are totally immune to teammates fire, and this goes for enemies as well. Fortunately(or unfortunately, if you are on the receiving end)all explosives and traps work on everybody, no matter where it came from.
 * Game Mod: A few being developed by the community, mostly using the Assets Editor in the Developer's Console, such as ones that upgrade Metalface, allowing him faster movement speed, more powerful attacks and flying, to name a few.
 * The Goomba: Shrooms and Birds.
 * Heavily Armored Mook: Guards in later waves can come equipped with an extra layer of armor. It usually doesn't help.
 * Hyperspace Arsenal: Played with. You can hold unlimited ammo of every type and and as many throwables as you can buy, but only three guns. It doesn't matter if it is three handguns or three rocket launchers, you can only carry three.
 * Jet Shoes: So far the only legitimate way to upgrade your characters movement. Works by adding speed to your jump mid-air, and when used with a Double Jump, can give you a high jump. When used in conjunction with rolling, you can cross entire maps in only a few seconds.
 * Invulnerable Knuckles: Justified, as you're using Sloth-GripTM Hands, but you're punching rockets of all things.
 * Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better: Averted. Slugger(conventional bullets) weapons are unable to penetrate any type of shielding, but typically have a higher rate of fire and can penetrate defensive rolling. Slugger bullets are also the weakest thing available to you, with most other weapons having instant kills on most enemies.
 * Laser-Guided Amnesia: Metalfaces have the option of a full memory wipe of their past life when they gain their shiny new body.
 * Level Editor: Largely incomplete, but the community is already making their own levels and distributing them.
 * Made of Iron: Predators and Hamsters both take obscene amounts of damage to take down. The Predator can be taken down easily by the Plasma Striker, but that weapon kills most enemies in one hit anyway.
 * Magnet Hands: You can roll and shoot at the same time, climb walls and shoot, run and shoot, etc. They are even Lampshaded as Sloth-GripTM Hands.
 * Magnetic Weapons: The Railgun is the only weapon of this type and the most powerful weapon in the game. It can one shot most enemies, but you must reload after every shot.
 * Mirror Boss: Survival Metalfaces have all the same moves as you do, and by the time they show up, should have the same equipment as well.
 * Money Spider: Everything drops random junk when it dies that has to be converted into Volts, the in-game currency.
 * More Dakka: Any of the Assault weapons, but the Slugger Assault takes the cake by emptying the 100 round clip in 8 seconds.
 * Necessary Combat Roll: Rolling provides temporary protection from many attacks, long jumps and many other nifty moves. Mastering rolling is key to mastering the game.
 * Nerf: Most notably (and most lamented) is the Bomb's demotion to Thermal Bomb. Originally, it was capable of taking out anything at least half way across the map. Now you'd be lucky if it actually kills the things right next to it.
 * Nintendo Hard: Fast-paced gameplay and a steep learning curve mean that early on you'll be seeing the Game Over screen more often than your character.
 * Obvious Beta: The game comes with a few warnings labeling it as an alpha game.
 * One-Hit Polykill: Matter weapons are capable of killing one enemy and passing on to the next.
 * Overclocking Attack: This is how Plasma and Beam weapons kill enemies. Instead of dealing damage, they gradually(or abruptly) heat up the target until they violently explode.
 * Overheating: Some Plasma weapons heat up after several shots, rendering them unusable for several seconds. Upgrades can fix this, but the problem will never go away entirely.
 * Rocket Jump: It is possible, but very dangerous, to use explosives to move around the map. The only way to really pull one off is to use the Shield Belt due to the fragility of Metalfaces. More common is using the Phaser's unique properties to move very fast and very far.
 * Shout-Out: Many scrolling on the bottom of the main screen as title splashes. The one to Minecraft says 'Gravel is awesome because arrows!'
 * Sorting Algorithm of Weapon Effectiveness: Played straight, but some early weapons retain their effectiveness because of some features and upgrades their super powered bigger brothers may lack.
 * Tradesnark™: The entire premise of the game is that you are a cyborg exploring alien planets on behalf of a Corrupt Corporation. Said Corporation gave you your shiny new body with a warranty, which is voided by just about everything you are required to do in the game. Better yet, see the page for yourself.
 * Video Game Tutorial: There is one included right on the main menu. It has all the basics, but also an Advanced area where they teach you the intricacies of rolling and how to punch incoming rockets.
 * When Trees Attack: They haven't been introduced to the game officially yet, but the Trunkan resemble walking tree trunks with leaves or nests on their heads.

...and more rolling!