The Otterman Empire Demo Impressions

As I loaded up the game, I was immediately greeted with old memories of Mario Kart with friends, combined with the shooting action of a game like Overwatch. An upbeat tune played, with a colorful cast of characters to choose from. Tri-Heart Interactive’s The Otterman Empire has potential to be a fun party game that people pull out to enjoy with friends.

The Otterman Empire is a third person shooter with a style reminiscent of Blizzard’s Overwatch. You can choose from a cast of fantasy/sci-fi aquatic animals to be your avatar. Each character has its own unique attack and ultimate ability on a timed cooldown. There are choices for customization add-ons with rarities that hint at a future loot box style update. Note: the team is really passionate about this being a one-time payment and have zero plans to add lootboxes to the game.

As it stands, my favorite part about The Otterman Empire is the music. Tri-Heart Interactive put together an extremely catchy original soundtrack that helps the player get behind the idea of fighting, futuristic otters in jetpacks.

One of my biggest concerns, however, is competitive game balance. One might not think that game balance is incredibly important for a party game, but it’s party games that brings out the competitor in even the most timid of friends. Nearly every person who has ever played Mario Kart has screamed in frustration or glee after a close race. A good party game needs interesting balance to foster proper party game competition and a good reason to throw the controller across the room.

When playing, you have multiple resources to keep track of. One of the most important is Water. In order to use your jetpack and shoot your weapon, water is required as fuel. The players can fill up on fuel by diving into streams of water that cut through the map. This makes these streams incredibly important points of interest. Though one conflict with that objective is the existence of a resupply point. There are packages that refill every single resource to its full capacity. This includes water for jetpacks and weapons, as well as character health. These resupplies dot a couple places around the map. But what is concerning about them is their extremely low cooldown. A player is able to post up on the resupply point without ever needing to visit a water stream. It does not matter much how much damage you take or supply you consume, as long as you keep the resupply point readily at hand. These need to be given more thought, otherwise they can completely warp gameplay around them.

As a party game is meant to be quickly consumable, character selection seems too enigmatic. Players are not given much information about the character they are about to choose, other than their physical appearance. If one person owns a party game and decides to bring it out for their friends, it is very likely that there are people that haven’t played it before. In the case of The Otterman Empire, you don’t find out what each character does until you enter the game or have already played that character. During character selection, a UI showing a quick summary of character ability and role would be highly effective at informing newer players on what to expect. When someone loads up a game of Mario Kart, they don’t need to have played before to know the difference between each type of kart they can choose from. The information is displayed readily and expedites the time between selection and gameplay.

However, The Otterman Empire has unique aspects about it that intrigue me and make me confident about its potential. Outfitting every character with a jetpack and requiring the usage of water as fuel, gives a lot of room for interesting design space. No other shooter has the same amount of aeronautic access while simultaneously being able to walk the ground. Similarly to Splatoon and it’s paint mechanic, The Otterman Empire has the chance to distinguish itself with its water sub-objective and access to the skies. Upon official release, I look forward to how Tri-Heart Interactive explores this unique space and how they go about creating a positively competitive and fulfilling party game.