There are careful, tactical considerations running through the mind at every moment: If the player moves behind a pillar, a guy with a shotgun will miss him, which will give the player enough time to punch that other fellow, grab his pistol and kill the shotgun guy. Levels quickly grow in complexity from simple tutorials into beautifully orchestrated ballets of death. Now, it has emerged from a crowdfunded chrysalis. There were only a few levels, the game had just a pistol as a weapon and it was trapped in a web browser. There is not a wasted mechanic, a wasted moment or a wasted design in this game, it is lean and efficient.Īt its best, “Superhot” is an improvisational feast, a game of reaction to uncertain circumstances that makes the player feel like the quick-reflexed action hero from a movie.īack in 2013, when “Superhot” was a prototype built in seven days, it was a fun use of an inventive slow-motion mechanic, but was limited and ugly. Even there, the quick, measured shooting is a blast – the game combines twitchy, reflex-based speed with measured accuracy within seconds of each other. Sometimes “Superhot” resembles a puzzle game in which it is just a matter of retrying the level until finding the right solution. It’s a game that lends itself to mastery. Combined with the slow-motion effect, players have some – but never enough – time to plan. The basic ways of interacting with the world of “Superhot” are all exciting action-movie moments. Are they real people? The creepy antagonist text messages you at one point “‘Define’ real.” The people shooting are made out of red crystals that shatter into suspiciously blood-like shards when they die. The levels are just unconnected points of fighting. Players run from a truck in an alley, are held at gunpoint in a subway station, fall from a skyscraper and then a kung fu fight breaks out until everyone else is dead. Each level drops the player into the middle of a scene from a hypothetical action movie. Move a little and time jumps forward, bullets fly by and shattered glass falls to the ground. Actually, time moves incredibly slowly even while standing still, like bullet time in “The Matrix.” 25, is a first-person shooter game in which time moves when the player does. Watch a bullet fly by, and step out of the way.