[PAX East 2016] Moonshot Preview: Bending it like NASA

Local multiplayer games always have a tendency to stick out at events like PAX, and Moonshot by developer Pump Action Games is no exception. Visually appearing to be a real time Worms game, Moonshot sees players controlling tanks in space battling it out for supremacy.

The arenas in which these tanks are fight are small solar systems with a number of planets, a star and possibly even an asteroid to mix things up. Players can drive their tanks around these destructible planets, firing at others if they get within range. Tanks can choose to stay stationary on a planet and pull up a shield that blocks projectiles and makes shots faster, or boost themselves between the different planets, potentially dropping bombs behind them.

But the real fun and depth of the game comes with how the tank and its projectiles interact with the physics of all the different heavenly bodies. Planets orbit around their sun, and each has its own gravitational pull based on their mass and relation to the other planets. This makes aiming shots much more challenging but also rewarding. Players can hunker down and wait for the planet they are on to reach a point in its orbit to have a clean shot, or they could fire a missile seemingly off course, causing another player to ignore it as it uses the planet’s gravity to curve into them. It’s this easy to visualize depth in relation to the random set ups of planets that makes each match interesting for seasoned players while also providing an easy learning curve for new ones.

Moonshot is currently in early access on Steam for PC, with a planned Mac and Xbox One version. With its latest update, the game now support