Buy It, play it, you’ll love it! My review for Killer Queen Black is done now. Thanks, and goodnight!

Well, maybe, I suppose I should tell you why… Ok then…

Killer Queen Black is the console adaption of the arcade eSport game “Killer Queen”. Killer Queen Black has been rebuilt from the ground up and optimised for console. If you have played the original, you will instantly be familiar with its play style.

Killer Queen arcade is known for its all-inclusive and community-friendly atmosphere. With the bar already set high, Killer Queen Black needs to stand up to that, and it does. Black is a team-based platformer that resembles games like Super Smash Bros., Brawlhala and Brawlout.

Teams are made up of 4 players. 1 player is the Queen and the other 3 are the workers. As a worker, you must collect berries, become a warrior and ride your snail off in to the sunset to victory! As the Queen, your job is to control your area and launch the offensive against the opposing team.

I had 3 ways to snatch victory in Killer Queen Black.

Military; to win this way, I had to kill the enemy Queen 3 times. Sounds easy right? Not really. Obviously, it depends on your opponent’s skill, but even a complete novice can offer up a challenge. This is a good thing.

Economic; to win this way, my workers needed to deliver their berries back to the hive faster than my enemy.

Snail; My favorite way to win. Jump and ride your snail to your side of the level in a back-and-forth game of tug-o-war. Each match is best of 5.

There is more depth to it as you will find out when you play. For instance, as a worker, you can offer a berry at a temple for a shield or super speed upgrade. Or if you prefer, you can upgrade to a warrior that may be equipped with a laser gun or can dash attack. Side note: am I the only one who just pictured Dr. Evil talking about Sharks “with fricken’ laser beams on their heads”? Sorry 😊

Anyway, back to the temples, You can use your Queen to move over the temples so that they change colour so as only your workers can use those temples. A small detail such as this can turn the whole match on its head. Just don’t be the team without temples.

The pace of Killer Queen Black takes a little getting used to at first, but it doesn’t take long to get the hang of it. For newbies, you can use bots to practice against and I recommend this, but the real fun is had against human opponents. The bots just aren’t as fun. Or as challenging.

Playing alone against a team of human opponents will see you lose more often than not. This is simply because a single person will find it hard to keep everything in order and flowing. I got so frustrated with it when playing alone. I would focus on my objective only to lost because I wasn’t also concentrating on what the enemy was up to.

Each teammate has something to offer the team as a whole and when you win because of your teamwork, there will be high-fives all round.

There are six levels to play on with different objective and terrain placement. This helps you become strategic in your teamwork. There are myriads of ways to attain victory and finding that one winning strategy won’t work every time. Improvise. Adapt. Overcome.

Graphically Killer Queen Black is that familiar “retro” or “pixelized” look that you either love or hate. I grew up with this style of graphics, so I am used to it and quite like it. The downside to this style of simplistic graphics is that there is nowhere to hide with the gameplay. You MUST excel with gameplay or bust. This should be a rule with even the top AAA games with multi-multi-million dollar budgets (sometimes I don’t think is unfortunately), but it is even more so important for indie devs. Killer Queen Black safely nails it with gameplay, so no problem.

Killer Queen Black has a rock-solid base to build on from its arcade parent and I truly hope the friendly community and excitement from Killer Queen filters through to Black. I can’t wait to see what the future holds for this.

Written by: Kurt Frohloff

A Founder of MKAU, a gamer, a family man. I have a love of all things gaming and a wish of mine is to have more time to actually play the games we review here!