Spider Tanks hands-on preview – a return to addictive arena games from the 2000s

The last of our PAX West 2022 coverage is drawing near; three of the last titles we will be covering are Gala Games Spider Tanks, Last Expedition, and Superior.

After the show floor closed on Sunday, we met with Gala Games for a little mixer. At the event, guests were encouraged to socialize, drink, eat, and even play demos of Gala Games upcoming games. Although Gala Games is regarded as a Crypto & NFT company, no mention of Crypto or NFTs was mentioned during the mixer.

The primary focus of the Gala Games’ mixer was to preview their upcoming games Superior, Spider Tanks, and Last Expedition. Each gaming station featured Alienware Laptops and Logitech mice and headphones. Here’s our preview of Spider Tanks, a top-down arena action game that made us nostalgic for 2000s-era browser games:

Spider Tanks hands-on

When we jumped into Spider Tanks, we weren’t really given a lesson or explanation; we were just told to play and have fun. Thankfully, the first team we played against wasn’t very good. In fact, we thought the first team we faced was a team of easy bots. After mentioning to the developer that we found it easy and asked to face harder bots, he informed us that those were real players.

In the second match, we got paired with players with higher skills. Their tanks were cooler looking, they landed abilities, and they worked better as a cohesive unit. Our random team member at the mixer was rather inebriated due to the open bar and definitely held the team back. The game was easily lost with the enemy team reaching the kill limit in half the time.

In the next round, we managed to get lucky. The final kill didn’t come until the last second and was a very back-and-forth battle. Andrew and I managed to block shots to protect our inefficient teammate and managed to win. 

The last win was no easy task. Each battle features a specific map with its own special layout. Knowing the map and its openings allows players to shoot through certain terrain and use their special abilities effectively. The invisibility ability was rather annoying at times since it didn’t feel consistent. Either, the enemy team had great prediction capability or it wasn’t working properly. 

Spider Tanks thoughts

Spider Tanks was a fun game to play even when others were drunk. In a way, it reminds us of the old web games that were popular in the 2000s and that’s a nostalgia that some gamers need right now. Hopefully, the game will feature a story mode on top of the battle arena-style combat. 

Spider Tanks is scheduled to be released in October and is currently in beta.