Aftercharge Third Alpha Test Event

On Friday, January 26, 2018, the Aftercharge developers, Chainsawesome Games, had their third alpha test. Aftercharge is a 3v3 game that pits 3 invisible robots called Workonics [KB1] against 3 invincible guards named Enforcers. The goal of the Workonics is to destroy all 6 of the extractors while the Enforcers are trying to track them down and destroy them. The end goal for Chainsawesome Games for Aftercharge is to make it so that each side has a chance of being a Workonic and an Enforcer, and the side that destroys the most extractors wins. It’s a fast-paced game with a 10minute time limit with each game averaging around 3 minutes.

The main differences were that Builder, a Workonic,[KB2]  now has one mini extractor [KB3] that has infinite charge and the introduction of two new characters: a new [KB4] Workonic called Turbo, and a new Enforcer named Huntress.Turbo has the ability to increase his speed, making it so that he can go from one side of the map to the other in record time. The length of time his ability lasts is based off of how many charges he receives from his teammates and how many he sends out. You only need a few to go from one side of the map to the other without the charge running out.Huntress adds a couple new, interesting aspects to the game. Her first ability is to throw down a leash mine of sorts. Once you throw down the grenadeit takes a few moments for it to activate but once it does, it can trap any Workonic that might be unfortunate to walk within its range. The second ability of Huntress is to send out her little drone robot on different Workonics to take away charges from them. This is the first time we’ve seen the ability to remove charges[KB5]  in Aftercharge. I fell in love with playing Turbo, he’s a lot of fun to play with his power to run so fastcompared to the other characters[KB6] . Huntress seems like she can be a fun character to play, and is definitely a good counter to Turbo. Builder’s extractor change has really helped change some of the gameplay as well[KB7] . The main things that are affected by this would be late game when there’s only one extractor left and early game when setting up for the waves of Workonics. It also allows the Huntress to camp up on the crane if she wants to.

There were only a couple hiccups here and there during the actual event. During the first couple hours a few people were experiencing lag, myself included, even though we had a ping of less than 100ms. After a quick patch, there was next to no lag for the rest of the alpha test. All in all, it was a fun experience and I was able to get 139 games played in the 12-hour test phase. I look forward to seeing what the people over at Chainsawesome Games have in store for Aftercharge for the next alpha test and for the game’s launch.Neither one has a solid date yet.