Developer: Moment Studio
Publisher: Moment Studio
Platforms: PC, Mac
Tested on: PC
Scraps: Modular Vehicle Combat – Preview
Scraps: Modular Vehicle Combat is the latest title by two man team Moment Studio. It’s a vehicle combat game where you build your own war machine and then ride it into battle so you can decimate your opponents. The game lets you create your own vehicles from scratch, whether you want them to look pretty or have a tank with barely no engines that’s filled with guns, everything is possible.
To battle! Scraps: Modular Vehicle Combat is, like said in the title, a game where you build your own vehicle and then battle other players’ vehicles to the death. The game wastes no time getting you up to par, you simply get in a game, build your own car or select a pre-built one and get fighting! Of course, there’s a little tutorial that explains everything but it’s not really needed because it’s very intuitive. However, some parts of the tutorial might come in handy once you start building your own vehicles.
The basics are pretty simple, you get dropped in an arena where everyone has the same spending amount to build or buy their car with. You can destroy parts and other cars which give you Scrap and points. Scrap allows you to do repairs or upgrades while you’re playing, but once you get completely destroyed then you’ll lose all of the upgrades you’ve bought in that life. You can respawn as much as you want because there is no death limit. You simply set a timer, get in the arena and keep fighting until the timer ends. Player with the highest score wins the round, easy!
Upgrading mid-game can be done by driving on top of beacons which will teleport you to your garage after three seconds, but currently there’s still a nasty bug which allows you to be destroyed even when the timer is done. Once you’re in the garage you get to the build screen, and this is where all of the magic in Scraps happens. In the build screen, you can make additions to your car or repair it as needed if it was damaged in battle. Parts can get shot off during battle, so once you’re in the garage it’s probably a good time to add any parts you’ve lost, because this can seriously outbalance your car.
An outbalanced car? How? Well, everything you put on your car comes with a cost. Of course it costs Scrap, but that’s not what it’s about. Your car has mass, engine capacity, power input, power output, cooling, max heat, power capacity and a centre of mass. Yep, not that simple anymore! When building a car, you have to pay close attention to all these things. Putting too many weapons on your car might be great for offense, but you’ll need a lot of cooling and power, and with a lot of parts comes a lot of weight. A lot of weight requires a lot of engines which in turn require cooling and power, see where this is going? You’ll have to try and balance your car as best as possible if you want any chance of survival. Of course you could just have no engines and have canons at the back of your car which propel you forward when you shoot, but that isn’t very practical.
When it comes to parts, there’s a fair bit of variety. Playing games will give you experience in order to level up, this unlocks new parts for you from time to time. You can get much more efficient cooling options, better power generators, bigger weapons and much more. Content wise, there isn’t that much yet. There’s one gamemode: deathmatch and three maps. It would be fun to see a lot more parts, maps and gamemodes in the future, but of course the development team is small so don’t get your hopes up too high.
Speaking of parts: the sound they make. The sound effects in this game range from mediocre to terrible. They’re all very loud and can disturb your experience quite a bit when you’re playing a lot. The engines make the worst sound I’ve ever heard in a car game and the guns are not too bad, but there’s a lot of room for improvement there as well. The graphics are okay and the game isn’t hard on your PC in any way, so most people should be able to enjoy it if they wish.
Another little remark is the camera. The camera itself is good and very responsive, but when you’re backing up against a slope it might start clipping through, which isn’t a total disaster but it’s not something you really want or need to see.
Conclusion
Scraps: Modular Vehicle Combat is a title that currently stands up to its name. You wage combat with vehicles, collect Scrap and change your modular vehicle as you wish. It’s quite enjoyable to play against AI and probably even more enjoyable against players (if the servers ever get filled). Furthermore, the development team has made some interesting promises about what will and may happen to the game in later stages, so hopefully the game will turn out to be a gem once it’s polished.
Scraps: Modular Vehicle Combat - Preview,
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