Hearing the stories behind game development is something I love, and that’s exactly what I got to do when having a chat with Winston Tang, one of the directors of Samurai Punk, at the JUSTICE SUCKS: Tactical Vacuum Action booth at PAX Australia this year.
JUSTICE SUCKS is a stealth-action game about a roomba-type vacuum cleaner with a strong loyalty to its family and an even stronger thirst for criminal blood. It’s also a sequel to Samurai Punk’s 2019 title Roombo: First Blood, which I would consider to be a test drive of the system that its sequel perfected.
When chatting with Tang at the booth, he gave us a rundown of what the game is, what your objective is, and how it all plays out. I got to try the demo there and it was pure unadulterated carnage. However, I actually didn’t know that the game had already been released a month prior, and I think I know why: JUSTICE SUCKS was released on September 8th of this year, the same day that Queen Elizabeth II passed away.
Tang explained the situation from his perspective:
So, our game came out and that was pretty huge, but fate decided that a couple of other things could also happen on the same day. We’ve been ramping for release for quite a while now, it’s been two years of development and we’re like, “Let’s pick a good time before the holiday season that doesn’t have the big rush of AAA and indie stuff, so early September. That’s the date.”
I had just come back from holiday, right before release and I saw some messages in our discord that were like, “If Liz kicks the bucket, I’m gonna be pissed.” And I was like, “What are they talking about?”, so I just went to sleep.
The next morning I woke up and I’m ready to see all the tweets about Justice Sucks! coming out, but then it was like, “Queen Elizabeth Dead”, and I’m like, “You gotta be kidding me.” I thought she was immortal! She died on the exact day of our release. I’m told it was within hours of it going live.
I’m thinking maybe she played it and in her last gasp was like “This is so good that I can leave the world now.” I can only hope that, but I also hope that she passed on the message, maybe Buckingham Palace will release a statement like, “The Queen had one last message that she wanted to give out: Play Justice Sucks!, it’s out now on PC and consoles.” I’m just waiting for that one.
This was easily one of the funniest stories I had ever heard, so funny in fact that I ended up spending my day off on Monday playing and finishing JUSTICE SUCKS and let me tell ya, this game goes unbelievably hard. There are a few cheeky references here and there to games and even anime that I did not expect, and I found myself laughing the whole way through.
If you haven’t given JUSTICE SUCKS a spin yet, I highly recommend getting amongst it. The game rocks, and it’s probably what the Queen would’ve wanted you to do. It’s available now on PC, Nintendo Switch, Xbox, and PlayStation.
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