My Friend Pedro developer DeadToast Entertainment just announced its next game: Shotgun Cop Man. Published by Devolver Digital, the action shooter will launch this year for PC and Nintendo Switch at a $10 price point. Ahead of its reveal, Digital Trends demoed its first 17 levels, taking us through its tutorial, first world, and a boss fight.
Shotgun Cop Man is a 2D shooter about a cop who has to go to Hell and arrest Satan. That’s all you really need to know there. It’s not too dissimilar from My Friend Pedro, DeadToast’s 2019 shooter that had players engaging in aerobatic violence pulled straight from a John Woo movie. Shotgun Cop Man is much smaller in scope, opting for comparatively modest visuals over cinematic spectacle. My Friend Pedro‘s DNA is still very much present, though, as it’s a game that ties mobility and shooting together.
The basics are simple enough. I need to move through platforming levels filled with enemies and traps like buzzsaws. There’s just one catch: I don’t have a jump button. To cross gaps, I need to use my guns to propel my body. If I want to jump, I need to aim my right joystick towards the ground and fire. Similarly, an airdash would require me to quickly aim in the opposite direction and fire. A basic sidearm is mapped to one of my triggers, which allows me to short hop, while my shotgun is on the other and can send me sky high. I only have a few shots in each gun and they don’t reload until I touch the ground.
The easiest way to describe it is “Celeste reimagined as a twin-stick shooter.” The first 17 levels put me through a gauntlet of quick platforming challenges that would require me to time my shots carefully so I could both blast enemies and avoid obstacles at the same time. That may sound like a complicated juggling act, but I picked it up quickly. The early levels start me off easy as I blast my way up to high platforms with my shotgun and fire my pistol to wipe out the little demons on the other side.
Later levels would ramp up by having me dodge spinning blades, requiring me to use my shotgun as a dash to cross the screen quickly. Others had me platforming on clods of dirt floating above spike pits. Once I fired, the ground beneath me would disintegrate, so I’d need to plan my jumps carefully. Two levels dropped me into combat arenas, tasking me with taking out 30 or so minions, while level 17 dropped me into a boss fight with a spinning buzzsaw who I needed to evade while attacking. I got a few different guns to replace my pistol occasionally too, from a faster SMG to a second shotgun.
Super Meat Boy comes to mind a bit, but it doesn’t seem like DeadToast is looking to make a punishingly difficult game. In fact, the demo offered a lot of flexibility. When I took damage, a heart would escape my body and I’d simply need to touch it to freshen up. When I did die, I was usually dropped back right during the segment of the level that killed me rather than going to the start. That was even true for combat arenas, which picked up where I left off every time. Death isn’t really much of a worry in Hell, I suppose. I mean, what’s the worst that can happen after that?
That approachable action is counterbalanced by level goals. Each one has three possible medals: one for killing every enemy, one for clearing it without taking damage, and a speedrun goal. That last part seems to tease what DeadToast is really going for here, as this feels like a game custom built for an event like Games Done Quick. I can see a determined player learning to beat it as fast as possible without taking damage, giving it a meta goal that I imagine will draw in the same community that tends to flock to Devolver’s usual slate of fast-paced shooters, like last year’s Anger Foot.
Shotgun Cop Man almost feels like the game that would have preceded My Friend Pedro, not vice versa, but I appreciate that. This almost feels like a deconstruction of that game, pulling back its spectacle to focus on a fundamental action loop that feels great so far. It’s nothing fancy or new, but it feels like the kind of concise, well-designed action game that Devolver generally has a good eye for. The price especially feels right at $10, which already sets it up as a promising budget game from a developer with a proven track record. Plus, how often do you get to detain Satan?
Shotgun Cop Man launches this year for PC and Nintendo Switch.
