Here’s yet another game that ain’t no spring chicken, Screencheat has existed for 4 years, first on PC than Xbox One and PS4 before finally making its way on the Nintendo Switch.

The catch phrase for the game is “Split screen shooter where everyone’s invisible” sounds crazy right? But who in their lifetime as a gamer hasn’t played family or friends and not cheated from time to time in local games of Halo or COD? We are human after all and Screencheat Unplugged uses what most call cheating and have turned it into a fun game for everyone.

Screencheat Unplugged has 11 maps and 9 game modes. Local play allows you to face three friends locally or face AI opponents. Games can be a mix of real players and AI opponents, and when facing AI you can choose the difficulty for them such as easy, normal or dreamcrusher. It’s possible to play local mode with just yourself but thats 100% pointless. When only one or two people are playing you can choose to only verse 1, 2 or 4 other AI opponents. There’s also a leveling system, as you level up you’ll unlock maps and modes as most are locked from the beginning. You also unlock weapons and rag dolls, rag dolls are only seen when you take down a player or at the end of a match.

Time Trials is pretty much the one player mode and has the same 11 maps as the local mode. These will also be locked at first and playing through each and completing the level objectives as fast as possible will earn you medals, that in turn unlocks more maps. You’ll go against one AI opponent you’ll see where they are just as you can in local mode. Time Trials has three mission types, basic, advanced and endless. You don’t select weapons in this mode either, each mission gives a new weapon.

Weapons are pretty out there! Exploding teddies, muskets, horse heads on a stick while holding a sword, and these are just the ones you earn first. There is 11 weapons to unlock as you level up and some work better than others. From the start you’ll unlock maps, weapons, rag dolls, but it’s not until you reach levels 23-30 that mutators come into play. These are crazy add-ons to game modes that make the game even more insane but still extremely fun to play.

Settings for the game include, audio and game mode settings, most you’ll never really have to bother touching. The audio setting you must check out is the announcer, you can choose to randomise the announcers voice or have it stay as one. You can change it at any time from sassy, brutal, silly or my favourite being the Aussie announcer. As for game mode settings it’s here where you can change the score limit, the time of the match and which weapons can be used. Advanced settings can increase or decrease points given per kill, penalty’s and the time for repawning.

Now I know this is seriously stating the obvious but there is no online multiplayer.

Playing on Nintendo Switch you can play a number of ways, like handheld mode or docked, but because the screen is split 99% of the time the small screen of the Switch wasn’t comfortable with myself and my kids all crowded around it. Though playing docked mode on a big screen suited perfectly.

As for controls I’ll sometimes prefer the pro controller, a single joycon or both joycons and these are all ways that you can play Screencheat Unplugged. There is a ever so small sucky part if you choose to play with a single joycon and that’s the gyro feature. To look up or down you actually need to move the joycon for this to happen and that can cause some confusion in your brain especially if you’re use to playing FPS without gyro. Other controllers can also make use of the gyro feature but personally I hated using it.

Fun comes in all forms across all genres, some more than others. Screencheat Unplugged is a very colourful game that sticks with particular colors from the title screen to each of the maps you’ll battle in, those being red, blue, yellow, green and sometimes white. Maps break up with each colour depending on the style of the map, some are levels that you can travel up and down while others are spread out as one level.

The weapons you hold can be colourful and cool looking, but when looking at your own square you’ll never see what other players are using and when your looking at their screen you’ll worry less about what they’re holding and more interested in where they’re situated on the map.

Now, shooters always have a HUD but it’s super minimal on Screencheat Unplugged as each inner square for each player has a tiny square that’ll show a number for every kill you get. Other modes will slightly change the HUD but it will only add a timer and a coin counter if you’re playing the Gold Rush mode.

We as gamers love to be competitive, it’s easy to stare at one screen and see who’s near us and either outgunning someone or shooting them in the back. Screencheat Unplugged forces you to look at not just one screen but four of them, all while looking for landmarks to know where to stand to not be killed yourself because everyone’s doing the same as you are and cheating to win. At first the game was tricky but the more time you put in you’ll soon be surprised how good you can get at this style of game.

Written by: MKAU Gaming