Hello Xbox players!

At Chainsawesome Games, we’re all big on multiplayer games and our favorites are the ones you need to coordinate as a team to outsmart your opponents. As gamers ourselves, what we’ve seen way too many times are games meant to be played in teams in which players mostly play only for themselves. While designing our own competitive team game Aftercharge, we tried to put a few things in place to encourage good teammate behavior within the core of the game.

Small Teams

Aftercharge is a 3 vs 3 game. We felt like having teams of that size would give everyone a general feeling that they can and must make a difference in the outcome of the game. It’s also way easier to coordinate a small team of 3 than a squadron of 12 players. We wanted to encourage people to group up with their friends… which is a breeze when you only have 2 friends to convince.

Coordinating Distractions on Offense

Aftercharge is not asymmetrical in team size but it is in gameplay. The team on offense is made of invisible robots. They are trying to sneak up to the objectives called extractors and destroy them while the enemies are trying to find them. As the attackers, you are playing with distractions. One robot can strike an extractor at one end of the map to draw attention while the two others wait for the defender to leave their spot to destroy far away extractors unchallenged.

The sacrificial lamb can even die from that strategy as a robot dying in Aftercharge is not a big deal. Any robot can revive each other at arm’s length with no cast time or cost. It can be part of the scheme to keep attention longer.

Keeping Focus on Defense

On defense, since your enemies are invisible most of the time, you need to be always on alert and a react quickly. All three members of your team can’t be flocking to every objective point on each alert. That would be the best way to hear extractors blowing up in your back all game long. If you and your teammates are not calling shots like “I saw one going through that tunnel,” “I’m pushing this dead robot to you, cover me,” or “He’s coming right behind you,” you will get played by the attackers and ultimately loose.

We want Aftercharge to be a lesson in effective teamwork. There is no room for a solo player in search of personal glory.