crappy

Characters that are generic puppets, aseptic to the point of being experimental, elements in the sets that seem to come from a free library for programming learners, an interface that has completely renounced any hint of design or usability and that seems to come from a ‘Paint’ type application… ‘Meccha Chameleon’ has, however, almost ten million dollars earned in one week on Steamand the only reason is not its extremely low price. The milestones. On June 9, Japanese developer lemorion_1224 launched the game on Steam at a price of only $4.99. Today it has sold more than two million units, that is, it has earned about ten million dollars. Discounting the 30% that Valve keeps, the developer has made 6.9 million in less than a week. And it’s all the work of this solo programmer, in approximately two months. How to play. The central mechanic of ‘Meccha Chameleon’ is simple: at the beginning of each round, some players hide and others look for them. The difference with other hide-and-seek games is that hiders can paint themselves to blend in with their surroundings, like chameleons do (sometimes with hilarious results that content creators are fond of). exploiting thoroughly). The more elaborate the camouflage, the harder the player will be to detect. That is, the ability to replicate the pattern of a wallpaper or a painting comes into play. Those less skilled with the brush have another option: look for dark corners of the map where uniform camouflage is sufficient. The precedent. The game collects ideas from ‘Prop Hunt’, a mode that was born in the mythical and highly cult ‘Garry’s Mod’, and that was later incorporated into franchises such as ‘Call of Duty’. The mechanics are the same: some players start as hunters, the chameleons hide, and those who are discovered go to the opposite side. An option can be activated with which those hidden whistle from time to time to give clues about their position. What is original about this new iteration of the idea is the layer of paint that allows for more effective camouflage. But… who is Lemorion_1224? Certainly not a newcomer. This developer had been experimenting for years with hiding mechanics within ‘Fortnite Creative’, the development platform integrated into ‘Fortnite’ that allows you to publish your own modes and accumulate players at no cost. Among these There is a game where players hide by making themselves extremely thin and another where they disguise themselves as NPCs. Lemorion_1224 has also experimented with mechanics inspired by ‘Dead by Daylight’ and ‘Peak’. ‘Meccha Chameleon’ is, therefore, the distillate of several years of testing. Friendslop it. Meccha Chameleon belongs to what in recent years has been called “friendslop”: cheap games, with a very simple, even tacky, visual finish, designed to be played in a group and shared on social networks. That is, games like ‘Peak’, ‘Lethal Company’ or ‘REPO’. The common denominator is the price (below six dollars in most cases), the viral potential and an approach that can be explained in thirty seconds. But to say that ‘Meccha Chameleon’ is part of a viral trend is to understate it: it had a peak of 200,000 simultaneous playerssomething that many AAAs never achieve. ‘Meccha Chameleon’ is another of the very triumphant successes of the medium that reminds us that issues such as graphics or technical neatness are completely accessory aspects to generate fun. In Xataka | This game has been programmed by only one person, and it is already being talked about as one of the great shooters of the year