GRcade

Story Mode & Mechanics Unveiled
Tuesday July 11th, 2017

‘Shakedown: Hawaii’ was first announced a year and a half ago. I’ve been busy at work ever since, and it’s come a very long way. It’s a new game (not Retro City Rampage 2), so a lot of new tech, tools and assets had to be built. During that time, I’ve trickled out teasers, but they’ve only given you a peek at the art style, music, and the destructible environment. Today, the game’s finally fully revealed – its theme, story, protagonist, and… business acquisition metagame!

Open World, New Parody

Where ‘Retro City Rampage’ was a send up to video games and pop culture, ‘Shakedown: Hawaii’ is a parody of mega corporations, white collar crimes, and the most comically egregious business practices that go alongside. It playfully satirizes business that's so ballsy, you'll be left saying, "I'm not even mad, that's amazing!".

Out of Retirement... to Retire the Competition

You play an aging CEO, stranded in a world he no longer understands, with a company that’s now a relic of the past.

Upon discovering that online shopping's destroyed his retail margins, ride sharing killed his taxi business, and video rental stores... are no longer actually a thing… it becomes clear that keeping the company alive will require drastic measures. He'll need to modernize the business! Unfortunately, the modernizations he chooses are exactly those comically egregious practices!

From the Boardroom to the Streets

Replacing the genre’s more commonly populated gangs and mobsters, are boardroom executives, formulating harebrained schemes to increase margins and boost profits.
But, whether you’re cornering the market on avocado toast or masterminding new hidden service fees, the missions ultimately unravel into the same carjacking, combat and shootouts you’d expect from the genre.

Collect 'em All!

As things begin to turn the corner, our anti-hero sets his sights even higher. Perhaps it was his rival’s taunts, or maybe he attended one too many motivational self-help seminars, or it could just be his own insecurity and over-compensation complex. Whatever it was, he declares that saving the company is no longer enough. He’s going to own the ENTIRE island! He’ll destroy EVERY competitor! He’ll convince the world that online shopping’s a dying fad, taxis are here to stay, and dammit… get everyone renting VHS tapes again!
The entire island is up for grabs... or at least, will be once you ruffle enough feathers.

Through story missions, small jobs and your own acquisitions, you'll gain ownership of properties and businesses. The revenue they generate can then be funneled back into more acquisitions.

Reality Check

Our anti-hero’s decision to spend more time on reality TV as a “CEO” personality, than as the actual CEO of his company didn’t help matters.
Even though he’s only reached D-list celebrity status, he’s still too recognizable to go on a rampage without a disguise. Luckily he owns a few costume shops in town.
New opportunities will emerge as your empire branches out into new market segments. With the disguise, you can begin sabotaging competitors, threatening those who threaten your brands, and collaterally “rezone” land.

Collecting Loose Change

With your trusty disguise, you can also begin shaking down shops for protection money, and use that to fund your “legitimate” corporate expansion.
These micro missions are scattered all over the island and successfully completing them will provide you with additional streams of income.
More on these shakedowns will be revealed in detail in a later trailer dedicated solely to their part in the game, so stay tuned!

Now We're Rolling!

So there it is! That’s Shakedown: Hawaii!

Now that we’re past the teaser stage, look forward to much more frequent and meaty trailers, showcasing specific missions and characters, the world and shops, character customization, plus more of the soundtrack (composed by the incredible Matt Creamer, AKA. Norrin Radd).

There’s no release date just yet, but Shakedown: Hawaii will be hitting Nintendo Switch, Nintendo 3DS, PS4, PS Vita and PC+Steam!

Physical Copies

By the way, I'll be continuing the trend and self-publishing physical copies of Shakedown: Hawaii as well!

UPDATE 12/07/2017 4.38pm: It turns out that Shakedown Hawaii's bullish aging real estate mogul and reality TV star antihero is not meant to parody a certain politician, despite the similarities in the premise, developer Brian Provinciano has clarified to Eurogamer.

"I do want to make one clarification though: The protagonist's not a parody of Trump, and was in fact conceived well before that last election even began," the developer said in an email to Eurogamer. "I understand the possible confusion since he's described as a CEO / guy on reality TV, but that's not the case here.

"The reality TV side of the game was one of those perfect flukes that came out of the Tetris-like process that is melding the desired story beats with gameplay that fits the genre. It grew out of an excuse to squeeze in more video game-y elements like rotating cannons and platforming conveyor belt props into the game's more grounded tone (ie. 'it's a game show'). Originally, you played a secondary character on these shows (a younger, fame hungry kid), but the second character didn't keep the game on-theme with the business satire, and I wanted to keep it more focused and on point, so I rewrote it to have the main protagonist compete on the shows instead. It wound up working out much better, actually, and was another lightbulb moment of magic!

"It's been a challenging game to build - riffing on these business things would've been a snap with a point and click adventure game, or in Seinfeld episodes, but making it work in this open world action/shooting context was a long process. I had to organically unearth a bunch of these 'ah-ha!' moments where the blocks fell into place, but it sure felt good each time they happened!"

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017- ... ew-trailer

twitter.com/PlayStation/status/1054077396134096901

Godzilla wrote:Anyone found this on the PSN store? I've searched via Google and its on the US store but not the UK one?

twitter.com/RetroCR/status/1126158242722115584

jawafour wrote:

Godzilla wrote:Anyone found this on the PSN store? I've searched via Google and its on the US store but not the UK one?

It's meant to have launched on Tuesday 7th accordng to the PS Blog (EU). Can't seem to trace a reason as to why it hasn't, though...

Edit: Vblank have advised on Twitter that the PS4 (EU) release is delayed until next week.

twitter.com/RetroCR/status/1126158242722115584

Godzilla wrote:Over 2 hours in.... Not sure I like it. The gameplay is fun but the upgrades and point of it and pointless as you need to constantly go into a menu then buy one place at a time. Then add upgrades which are just income multipliers then add the new income multipliers manually to every place you've already bought. But it's pointless as by now you'll already have enough money to buy the earth twice over.

The base GTA game is fun here, the story is silly and entertaining but the other half of the game is just menus and no real reward. Feels like a mobile game without the waiting 24 hrs for a building to finish upgrading.