Neighbors: Suburban War is a sinister multiplayer game with a friendly face
Blog Andrew Joseph 28 Feb , 2025 0
I believe that even the most locked gamers don’t have anything to play like their neighbors: Suburban War. You can see some influence and similarities with other games – it has Arcadey shooter feel for Team Fortress, light tactical foundation building for survival games, farce body humor of goat simulator, or just dead – all in an anarchic WWW2 post-package. I had several hands-on classes with it, navigating its team-based home wrecking action, and while its non-traditional form would extend in the first minute of the first, it was hard to leave the top bed without a smile.
For neighbors, there may be no more opposition: Suburban war teams vs. team infrastructure compared to idyllic, thriving suburbs of the United States. However, the developer's invisible walls want to make a bright and colorful game, which will be surprising at first glance, and is approachable to the audience. “We also had the idea of neighborhood hate elements from day one,” explained art director Andreas Bech. “For most teams, the optimism of the post-50s and 60s resonated with it.”
Ironically, the collective dynamics are presented toward perfectionism, causing families to become so angry that they will destroy their peers because they seem to be doing it also Every iteration of the suburban war is bedrock. Initially a game where players decorate their own houses and destroy their opponents to win the top prize in some kind of House pageant, becoming a more raucous skirmisher, “It’s obvious (PVP and PVE versions) aren’t mixed up,” Invisible Walls Ceo Ceo Ceo Ceo revealed. “Everyone wants to destroy each other's house.”
So their game turned into a squad-based hybrid shooter and a base builder that I worked with the development team for about an hour. Our goal is clear: we must penetrate the enemy's residence and destroy its “necessary items” such as stoves, toilets and master beds. Of course, this is much easier to say, because there are a lot of variables and strategies in every game, so chaos is inevitable.
It all starts with character selection. Each of the eight available neighbors has their own signature starting items and special abilities, such as rivet-inspired gold and her throwable tube wrench, which can defend her home as she goes out to plunder. There are two available neighborhoods (maps) to choose from, each block determines the location of the neutral target, each team can choose a specific home layout to use, each floor plan has its own different entrance and essential item locations. It feels like a lot to know in advance, but despite the variability of a county fair for each game, it is a silly thing to pursue a “perfect competitive combination”.
“We want to be different because this is the game you play when you don't play (like a more competitive) competitor,” David said. Andreas added, “The tone is easy, we designed for ease, but we did find that people start to become very competitive after three or four games.” The design consensus among them is to focus on making cool things first and then balance them. Game director Sebastian Bevensee said: “We are not experts at PVP and are balanced when starting this game. The goal is that as long as you hit them, everything will make everything impactful and encourage everyone to be an organizer that comes with it when the opportunity comes.
After choosing your avatar to defend with your teammates (and where you will defend it for your opponent), it’s time to get to the dirty business of targeted destruction. Your team of up to four must build various tools, traps, and defenses to reject your annoying jurisdictional neighbors while also making your team even more annoying and annoying. Purchasing a tool or a basic defense tool will cost you to earn slow money over time, but make a one-time payment by eliminating enemies. More valuable options are available when you upgrade your workbench using spare resources found in a construction site located at a neutral point on each map. After purchasing the starter tool – usually a crowbar, as it helps to destroy objects faster – every suburban war I've played starts with a team-wide sprint towards these willful crates.
My team was very good at getting some resources from subsequent fights without causing too many casualties, but the early days when no one had special equipment, I felt the most character choice and team composition. Big Bangers like Chad can hold the front line and distract the enemy long enough for others to snatch resources from under you. Or a sneaky little asshole like this, Dennis X Kevin McCallister Hybrid, who can avoid melee completely and instead start trying to break into your home as he leaves. Throughout the game, the neighbor’s personal special abilities remain influential, but the ability to have clear advantages over those that go beyond them has never been more powerful than the first few minutes.
After reclaiming the resources, we focused on locking the house, lining the fragile parts of the fence with bear traps, repairing damaged doors and windows, and even setting up a small oil rig to turn our passive trick drips into more sprinklers. All the time, both sides took turns poking each other, sneaking to the back doors and windows, while causing a commotion on the front lawn by running in person and trying to catch the poor housewife slipping or in the form of a delivery truck delivered through the speed of Cul de Sac and Fireworeors. Then, after about four minutes of game time, night fell on our challenge. In addition to darkening the battlefield, it also shows that the night guard dogs of each house are looking up, working to lower any enemy, and eliminate them with great prejudice until the sun rises and chaos follows again.
Communicating between squads, whether on the street or in each other's living rooms, is always nervous because more dangerous weapons, such as sledgehammers or shooting orange pressurized cannons, can be quickly a player. However, the hammer is slow, and the cannon is one of the few ranged options in the game, which is difficult to aim, shoot and reload slowly. This is all about design. “We've been encouraging people to be ahead and closer,” Sebastian explained. Their focus is on maintaining the most effective and easiest offense as close-range choices force players to interact with each other rather than trying to capture sniper positions or control the sniper range from a distance.
However, this does not limit their weapon choices to operate in the wild. Many options run as you imagined, but then there are some tricky options for household items, such as the aforementioned vacuum cleaner that can draw enemies into the carnival range. You can set up a chicken coup and then throw the eggs on the enemy to blind them. With enough investment in your workbench, you can access my favorite choice: a seagull that you can fly to bomb enemies like Call of Duty Kill Stripes. Instantly, cartoon-like madness is fun.
Throughout the entire round I played, the biggest problem I found was feeling like I was doing the right thing at the right time. I didn’t look for the most effective way to spend money and resources because I felt that I was actively contributing to the overall goal of damaging the enemy’s dwellings. It’s easy to master the basics, but learning how to know when to go all out to the enemy or when to back down to defend is something I can’t intuitive for a short time with my neighbors. David agreed. “Our main struggle is, ‘How do you explain meta in a game like this?’’ They have seen game testers grow into sharp and knowledgeable players around six o’clock, so it’s impossible to let go and worry and embrace the madness.
So the neighbor is: the next big party shooter in the suburban war? I'm not sure how it will compete with the genre's Juggernauts, but it will certainly stand out. Two Geezers in the shape of Mr. Magoo and Evel Knievel exchanged plunger cross fires on the street and were hit by a delivery truck to the front yard are situations you can't find in your current favorite team shooter. Invisible walls like this. They don't want to replace the games you like, they just want to be the entertainment facility coded by crazy men for the time you spend.
I believe that even the most locked gamers don’t have anything to play like their neighbors: Suburban War. You can see some influence and similarities with other games – it has Arcadey shooter feel for Team Fortress, light tactical foundation building for survival games, farce body humor of goat simulator, or just dead – all in an anarchic WWW2 post-package. I had several hands-on classes with it, navigating its team-based home wrecking action, and while its non-traditional form would extend in the first minute of the first, it was hard to leave the top bed without a smile.
