For the past 6 months or so, my friends and I have been obsessed with an arcade game called Killer Queen (KQ). I first played over a year ago, at XOXO in Portland, but until Brewcade brought the first public machines to the Bay Area, had by and large forgotten about it. Then, while trying to find a way to entertain some visitors from out of town, I rediscovered KQ. Ever since then, I’ve played almost every week, watched hours of replays from teams on the other side of the country, considered flying to Chicago to compete in a tournament, joined not one but TWO Slack groups dedicated to the game, and played with a team that won 3rd place in SF’s first tournament.

When people ask me to describe it to them, I basically call it cooperative fighting game, and then with a head scratch, admit it’s in a genre of its own. The basic premise is that it’s a 5v5 team game with 3 different ways of winning: economic (collecting 12 berries), military (killing the other team’s lead 3x), or snail (riding a snail across the screen). Each team has a queen, who generally leads the offensive charge, thanks to her ability to dive bomb. The other 4 players begin as drone bees but can upgrade to speed drones (faster versions) or to warriors (combative bees who cannot ride snails or collect berries). Suffice to say, words can’t really capture how pleasing and engaging it is, and I strongly recommend everyone immediately find their closest KQ machine and play rather than listen to me babble about riding snails.