PAX Aus 2017: Shots Fired Hands-On Impressions

Shots Fired was by far the weirdest game I played at PAX this year. It’s my kind of absurd. It combines a dark sense of humour with some simple but engaging gameplay, but there were a few issues that sharply stood out in terms of how to progress through the game. I played the game on PC but the developers are planning to release a Switch version alongside the PC version.

The game starts with an unfortunate tired trope of the protagonist’s wife being killed to fuel their motivation through the game. It does provide the first example of the game’s dark humour though, with the wife nonchalantly texting a play-by-play of the events to the player while they respond purely with emojis. It’s a sequence that toes the line of being distasteful but I think it manages to just make it out on top. The game revolves around the protagonist’s quest to get revenge on the organisation responsible, but to do that they need some money.

The protagonist is a photojournalist who earns money by taking on photography assignments for a site called ‘FuzzBeed’. I think that might be a reference to something but I’m not sure what. Navigation through the game is done via the apps on your phone – photography assignments are sent through your messaging app, which you travel to by using a ridesharing app to catch a ride to your destination.

Once you’ve arrived you’ll need to snag a photo of your target. This could be something specific like an ice-cream shop in the area, or a more vague request like finding someone committing an act of vandalism. This plays out like a Where’s Wally sort of game – you need to scan the environment for something matching the criteria and then zoom the camera in to bring up your camera, allowing you to take a photo. You only have a limited time to get a photo, so you have to be quick. Once you’ve taken a photo of the right target (or time runs out!) then you have to wait around for a new assignment. This process takes an oddly long time and it feels like you’re meant to be doing something to trigger progress but… you just need to wait. It’s a bit weird, and isn’t an ideal way of demoing at a convention.

At the end of the day you get paid based on how many assignments you completed, and can put this to use in the shopping app. I bought a sniper rifle so that I could take on assassination assignments. It’s kinda weird jumping from photography assignments to murder, but it’s not just another bit of dark humour. Assassination missions play out with the exact same mechanics as the photography ones, except you only get one shot so you’d better hope you get your target right. It becomes clear that photography is a stress-free training environment to adapt to the game’s mechanics before the high-stakes assassination missions. These missions are taking from the Huntr app, which is basically a dating app but for assassinations. You swipe right for contracts you want, and swipe left for those you don’t. Your client will get in touch with a briefing, which often venture into the absurd. They’ll use text speak or barely coherent English to tell you who they want dead,and you again respond with a series of emoji to let them know you’re on the case.

You use the ridesharing app to make your way to these jobs just like the photography ones, but with an added twist. You’re given a series of documents that hint to the target’s identity and appearance which you need to sort through to work out who you need to take out. This segment is a lot like Papers Please – you’re given a big clump of documents and a limited amount of screen space so you have to drag all your evidence around in order to get a good view of it, and the game doesn’t explicitly point out the important information or record it for you. You need to analyse it and make your own conclusions and remember the details once you’ve begun the mission.

When you’ve arrived at the scene you need to keep an eye out for someone who fits the details you’ve surmised and take them out the same way you would take a photo in the journalist assignments. Once you’ve taken a shot you need to make your escape. Escapes are handled through a quick minigame where you need to navigate through a maze while avoiding police. It thrusts these new mechanics on you suddenly so I was caught off guard the first time I had to do this, but when I got my bearings I did much better in the future. Getting caught means you have to pay bail, and the game implied that getting too much heat would cost me the opportunity to take photography assignments in the future, so that’s an interesting element of risk and reward.

There’s an overarching storyline where you hunt down targets related to your wife’s murder but it wasn’t exactly clear how to progress through this. I got told my target had a contact in a certain area, but I didn’t understand whether I was meant to be waiting for details on him to appear or if I had to take a photography assignment in the area to take a photo or what. I kept taking photography and assassination targets but I didn’t seem to be making any progress through the story, so the means of progression were really confusing.

Shots Fired has me intrigued, but I’m not sure how long its gameplay would remain engaging. There’s only so much you can do with these target-spotting mechanics, so hopefully the developers realise this and pace the game appropriately. Progression through the game is also a bit iffy at this point, so a bit more guidance through it would be appreciated. I do like the absurdity of its humour and premise, so I’ll be keeping an eye on it for sure.