Tyr

As seen on my blog.

A Welcome Surprise

These days, I usually enjoy single-player video games far more than massively multiplayer games or competitive shooters. Occasionally, though, a shooter game may strike my fancy, and Tyr is that game.

It is a hero-shooter, except all of the heroes are tanks. Tank shooters inevitably demand a slower pace of play and a greater emphasis on strategic thinking, which is what is advertised in the promotional material for the game. After playing it for 11.3 hours, I can say that this is true, in a fun way, of course, that mixes the fast-paced elements of a hero shooter with elements of tank shooters.

The greatest difference, I believe, is the line-of-sight mechanic. It is not good to be sighted by enemy tanks in this game. Once you are, a red outline points your tank out to the entire enemy team. It goes away after you hide for a bit, but that aspect alone demands that the player put much more thought into their positioning.

Tyr is in its playtest phase right now; it's actually closing over the weekend, on the 16th. I will sorely miss it, but it will be back rather quickly on the 27th of this month. The cool thing, however, is that the game will still be accessible through custom games. Apparently, some games will even be hosted on Discord, unfortunately... So I'll have to wait for the 27th, because fuck discord.

Or, if people join the Stoat guild I created, we could play some of our own custom games! The playtest is free after all, maybe you could give it a try and we could play a few rounds together...

Playtests, My Beloved

I love participating in playtests for multiplayer games because they're always new and usually have a feature or two that makes them stand out from their genre. Tyr reminds me of a game that had a similar playtest phase, Gigantic. I loved that game; I played the heck out of it, but it ultimately fizzled out. They tried to revive it, but it really felt like a shell of its former self. You can tell that the original dev team wasn't there to bring it back.

The thing is that playtest games are simply fun. There is no meta, they're new and there's just not a lot of toxicity. Tyr doesn't even have text or voice chat, so players can really only be toxic in their strategies, which is nice. I just hope that the game can garner a large enough community to survive post-launch, which is something Gigantic failed to do. The developers are offering the game completely for free, so they'll have to monetize it somehow. Hopefully that doesn't destroy it in the long run, too.

This same sort of brief obsession happened to me with Marvel Rivals. I remember having a blast with that game when it first came out, but my interest it in it quickly dwindled a few months after its release. I wouldn't be surprised if a similar thing happened with Tyr, but I can see my own interest having greater longevity with its slower pace and emphasis on strategy. At least, that's what I hope. My Steam backlog begs to differ.

Tanks That Can Fly

For those who may have tried the game already, I generally like to play Alecto and Atlas, which are polar opposities. Alecto is a really fast hover tank that specializes in picking off foes and getting out quickly. Atlas is the slowest tank in the game, but has really good frontal armor, allowing him to act as the team's anchor. I have really enjoyed learning how to play these tanks so far, purely from playing the game. Since it is so new, there's not much content out there to study, but I haven't really gone out looking for it, either.

I remember what sold me on the game was the light tank Ikarus, which can turn into a VTOL aircraft. It's sick as hell. Funnily enough though, I haven't even bothered to unlock it. I had two chances to do so and I chose other tanks instead (Alecto being one of them). After getting my hands on the game, I guess I decided that a tank that can fly just doesn't seem to fit my playstyle.

Chess-like

Playing this game feels a lot more akin to playing chess compared with every other multiplayer shooter I've been exposed to. You can't just rush into combat guns ablazing; you will get shot at from every angle if you do. It takes patience and observance to know when the time is right to attack and to know when it's time to retreat. In other shooter games, you can usually just turn off your brain and click on anything that moves. That simply doesn't work in Tyr.

Again, if you like the idea of this game, try it out on Steam and join my Stoat guild! I would love to find more people to play this game with.