They say there’s nothing new under the sun. Everything’s been done. Every road traveled, every line ended, every track ridden until it ran out of rail. As a fan of the weird, the new, the bonkers, this makes me sad – mostly because it’s true. But every now and then, you find something that defies conventional wisdom. Something novel, something you really, genuinely haven’t seen before. And every now and then, it also just so happens to be something that speaks to the exact kind of stuff you think is cool. Enter Denshattack!, a game that was pitched to me as “what if Tony Hawk drove a train and it looked like Jet Set Radio.” And if you know me, that’s basically my sleeper cell activation phrase. So, eyes flashing red, I sat down for a hands-off demo and was immediately upset that it wasn’t hands-on. That’s how intrigued I was by what I saw.
Denshattack! is a game of the times, which is to say its set in a post-climate catastrophe world where the rich live in air-purifying domes and the rest survive in what’s left of Japan. Because this is exactly the kind of thing that inspires skateboard-style rebellions, a movement known as Denshattack has sprung up and is reclaiming the wastelands of Japan. They’ve rebuilt the old railroad tracks and rival gangs duel over territory. How, you ask? By being the fastest train on the track… or doing the sickest tricks. Denshattack! isn’t just about being cool, it’s about being fast, too. I didn’t get to see much of Denshattack!’s story, but I can’t deny that the character designs nail a punk-inspired, anime-esque vibe that fits the concept perfectly, and practically leaps off the screen. This game is stylish as hell.
But style ain’t everything. You have to perform on the track, too. In addition to several clips spread out across several parts of Denshattack!, I got to see the first two levels in their entirety. The first thing that struck me was the sense of speed; these trains move fast. Naturally, there’s a ton of tricks here, from kickflips to FrontImpossibles, Backflips, and everything in-between. You may be controlling a train, but she’s a nimble beast, and your only limitation seems to be that you’ve gotta land on a track. Otherwise, you’re free to smash through bridges, get big air off huge jumps, while chaining tricks together the whole time, do wallslides, ride the ceiling of a tunnel, and a lot more. Oh, and there’s multi-track drifting, which is something that only a train could do, and it looks absolutely sick.
Of course, it’s not enough to land a trick. You gotta be able to chain them together to build combos, and Deshattack!’s level design supports that, offering branching paths, speed boosts, rails to grind, corkshrews, and levels that snake back over one another. And there’s no shortage of variety in terms of what I saw. There are rural areas, urban areas, bits of track that hug the coast, rails that run across rivers and snake up waterfalls, a lava section that looks like it takes you into the heart of an active volcano, giant stone statues to do tricks over, and ever a Ferris Wheel to jump on and ride down through a city, over a giant dinosaur, and through a nearby harbor full of windmills. Yeah, man, this stuff is wild. But developer Undercoders emphasized that Denshattack! is being designed to be accessible and that you’d be back on track (sorry) quickly if you do fail a level so players feel encouraged to take risks and explore off the beaten path. Obviously, there’s stuff here for the sickos, but if everything goes right, you won’t need to be one from the jump to enjoy Denshattack!
There are also collectibles to grab and high scores to chase as well as level-specific challenges, like careening into balloons full of paint to paint an abandoned mining town or knocking over Miraido’s – the company that controls the new, high-speed trains that ferry the rich from dome to dome, and runs most of the country – comm towers. It looks like each stage will have several of these challenges, so with more than 50 levels and a few challenges each, there should be a lot to see. I’m particularly excited to see what the races look like, as we only got to see a little bit of what they have to offer, but I can’t knock Denshattack!’s ambition. It’s definitely trying to get the most out of its premise.
And that’s not even including the bosses. Yeah, bosses. We didn’t get to see a lot of these – just two in fact. One was a mecha Voltron made up of several trains and dressed kinda like Sailor Moon, while the other was essentially a massive mechanical sandworm. Without playing Denshattack!, it’s hard to say how any of this will work, but I can’t deny that it at least looks cool.
Naturally, there are ways to customize your train to get just the right look, and of course, the funky soundtrack, which comes courtesy of, among others, lead composer Lee Topes, who gave us the music from Sonic Mania, Sonic Frontiers, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge.
What stayed with me, though, was Undercoders’ dedication to capturing Japan as a place, and I got to see how many places in Denshattack are inspired by real locations in the country itself. Combine that appreciation for Japan’s landscapes and distinct urban settings with a “why not?” design mentality that looks at a building and thinks, “Wouldn’t it be cool to do a trick off of that?” and you get stuff like… riding a Ferris Wheel, and I’m excited to see where else we’ll go, and what kind of bonkers things we’ll get to do when we get there.
I ended my time with Denshattack! by asking the developers the most important question of all: can I put my train on a giant skateboard? They told me that they hadn’t done that (yet), but given the dev team’s love for finger skating, and that they made an actual, physical model of the train on a finger skate so they could play with it in the office, I’m hoping it makes it in. C’mon, Undercoders. You know you want to.
Either way, I came out of my session with Denshattack! excited to actually play it myself, and grateful that there are still studios out there that aren’t afraid to go for the gonzo, the weird, the silly, and the ambitious. There are new things under the sun, y’all. All we had to do was find a group of guys crazy enough to say, “Hey, what if a train could do a kickflip?” As it turns out, that answer could be pretty rad.
