Shootmania Impressions

Shootmania: Storm Preview

There are a few different modes available for Shootmania: Storm, but in our preview event we found ourselves limited to basic point capture and 1v1 instakill modes. Each of these prompted further comparisons to Trackmania though, with levels built out of clearly modular pieces that slot together smoothly before being dumped into large, empty landscapes.

As in Trackmania, you can exit the arena itself and roam about a bit in the greenery beyond, but there's nothing there. We only found it useful for stealth tactics - jump out of the level at your end, run around the side of the arena and then re-enter the map behind the enemy spawn point if the map allows it. Consider that a pro-tip.

The combat itself is competent and slick, with the slow recharging of most weapons making matches tense as you're forced to weave and dodge around your opponents as you gradually reload. Then comes the burst of firing again, before dodging recommences - when it's working well then Shootmania is the most stressful ten seconds of your life looped over and over. In a good way.


When it doesn't work though, it's hard not to see Shootmania: Storm as being too simple for its own good. Suffer a run of defeats or tire of the meaningless aesthetic and it becomes hard to see why you'd pay for Shootmania Storm over any shooter. There's no story here, no direct progression which isn't being built by players using the powerful scripting tools and the game, while technically interesting, isn't graphically astounding. The action is polished, but it's also limited.

Sauerbraten looms large over Shootmania: Storm as an equally accessible, customisable, visually pleasing alternative. And that has the benefit of having a much simpler financial model - it's free, through and through.

Shootmania's editor is universally impressive, at least. Ostensibly similar to the one seen in Trackmania, levels can be built out of simple modules - blocks of land or curves of architecture such as balconies. These can be positioned into a grid so that they match smoothly up with their surroundings, allowing players to build complex battlefields with remarkable ease.


If it sounds limited then you're either imagining it wrong or you've never seen what some map-makers have come up with using the similar system in Trackmania.

Various expansions have been made to the editing system for Shootmania too, including a scripting system which lets players make more advanced items for their levels, such as in-game scoreboards. We even saw an in-game game demoed in the form of a Tetris clone that you could play as you edited levels.

It's this sort of functionality and modability that'll prove to be Shootmania's biggest attraction, we reckon, though it remains to be seen if the game can attract a community large and vociferous enough to support itself. That's something that wasn't a problem for Trackmania, but our worry is that the complexity of Maniaplanet that's been layered on top may make Shootmania an altogether different problem for Ubisoft.

Shootmania is being developed by Nadeo and is due for release in early 2012, when it will be published by Ubisoft.