Developer GIII Holdings LLC announced on February 20th, “The Showdown Effect: Reloaded” was announced to be released on March 5th. The supported platform is PC (Steam). According to the store page, it will be released on March 6th in Japan due to the time difference. This work is a revival of the work “The Showdown Effect”, which was discontinued in 2018, by fans of the same work who, with official permission, made adjustments and added elements.
“Showdown Effect: Reloaded” is a 2D competitive action game that is basically free to play. Players choose one of 10 heroes and engage in a brawl amidst guns, swords, and explosives. There are six types of stages, including a medieval-style bandit fortress and the futuristic city of Neo Tokyo. Players will use movement skills such as sliding and wall jumping to freely move around the stage and fight. Each hero has unique skills, and you can freely choose the weapons they equip. There are also skins available for dressing up, allowing you to customize the appearance of your heroes and weapons.
There are four game modes available, including battle royale brawls and team-based battles. There is also a ranked match element, and by winning, you can move up the leaderboard rank. It is also possible to create a custom server, and the game rules can be changed within the server. It seems that you can play around with various settings, such as increasing the number of explosives or making it possible to shoot multiple times without having to reload.
This work is a revival of the game “The Showdown Effect” released in 2013. The Showdown Effect is developed by Arrowhead Game Studios and Pixeldiet Entertainment and distributed by Paradox Interactive. The game was discontinued in 2018 due to a decline in the number of players. The Steam store page has also been deleted.
overseas mediaPC GamerAccording to , the game’s multiplayer was provided in a P2P format where clients interacted directly with each other, so it was possible to play multiplayer even after the game was discontinued. Avid fans continued to play the game, but the community was worried that new players were not coming in because the store page had been deleted.
Mr. Giuseppe III, who was an avid fan of the same work, took the lead in petitioning the seller, Paradox Interactive, to resell it, but he did not receive a good response at first. According to Giuseppe III, although the vendor showed sympathy, they informed him that they had failed once before and that they could not prioritize the issue.
Therefore, in December 2021, Giuseppe III proposed that he and his team adjust The Showdown Effect, fix bugs, and add elements before releasing it. After discussions, Paradox Interactive granted Giuseppe III and others a non-commercial development license. It seems that he was given permission to modify the game’s code and release it to the public as long as it is released for free, and he also aims to have trusted users share the code and participate in the development. It seems so.
In an interview with PC Gamer, Giuseppe III expressed his gratitude to the publisher for giving him permission to redevelop the game. “It’s been super nice how supportive Paradox has been with everything, when it would have been super easy to just ignore my requests!)”. As a result of the seller’s response to the enthusiasm of fans, the game, which had ceased operation and its store page was deleted six years ago, has been revived on Steam with improvements.
“Showdown Effect: Reloaded” is available on PC (Steam), it is scheduled to be distributed on March 6th.
