Pit People is like turn based Pokemon collecting

Pit People is an early access game by Behomoth, the studio that brought you Castle Crashers and they even re-use a good set of the art assets from CC in Pip People. This has been in Early Access since January when over 200,000 people bought it but you can only find less than 100 playing it now.

I’m really torn on even mentioning this game. I think it has some really good humor when you are following the story line, and if you like to collect things, you are in collector’s heaven.

The artwork is really quirky. One moment you’ll feel like you’re in candy land, the next you’re in a techno town, the next your in a lava field. The world changes frequently when the Bear comes and snatches you city and places it in a new spot.

When you do battle, it’s turn based where positioning is critical - if a character has a range of 2 and it has 3 characters within that range, you don’t know which one it will attack so you really want to position it where so that there is no ambiguity of what it will attack.

When characters die, they resurrect in town (I do think there is some sort of hardcore mode if you don’t want that), but losing a person is so bad that you’re going to want to go back to town because being down 1 in a match where you typically have 5 is a real detriment.

Wandering the map to find an objective or just to collect some new character / hat / shield takes about 15 minutes, so this really falls into a nice timewaster when you don’t have time to invest but want to do something.

The map is huge and every time the big bear pulls you up it randomly regenerates (I’m assuming here because it changes) and it’s kind of cool to venture the world map seeing what is around. You’ll run into random enemies, random missions, gold & treasure chests and some switches which do something but I"m not quite sure what.

So, quirky artwork, thousands of things to collect and equip, really great humor, what’s not to like?

I don’t like that so little is explained. This requires patience and experimenting, not necessarily in that order. I’ve posted a few questions on their boards, and people as well as devs are answering, but it’s kind of a frustrating first/second/third experience. There is a LOT going on for such a little 15 minute turn-based battle.

There is an element of rogue like that I really don’t care for. You’re going to get sucked into battles you really don’t want to be in and either I’m missing the flee battle button, or there is no button which I’m kind of assuming - if someone else can tell me how I’m all ears.

The other thing is the collecting really isn’t thousands as advertised. Oh, you can collect 100 different shields if you’re going for a specific look, but 1/3 of them you won’t be able to equip, 100% of them won’t equip on some characters, and the vast majority do absolutely bupkis to any stats. Eg, if you find a medium shield, it will do nothing more and nothing less than any other medium shield. Same goes for weapons, hats and cream frosting (remember when I said there is an element of Candyland here?)

I’m not sure what the point is - I guess I should be going after the missions the game wants you to take, but they are getting more & more difficult, so I think the game is telling me to level up my characters more (i’m nearing 30) and since I keep finding these cool new characters, I’m experimenting with them, which means leveling up even slower as I’m spreading out this XP over more characters.

They readily admit the game isn’t finished - I’m guessing the story will progress more & more. But I’m not sure even that will convince me to keep playing. We’ll see. After all, it nice to pop in for 15 minutes at a time.

Any one else try this out yet?

11 posts were merged into an existing topic: The Behemoth’s Pit People - Castle Crashers guys do hex-based strategy