Standing out in the multiplayer shooter market requires a unique hook. Indie studio Sloth King’s approach is handing eleven weaponized primates an assault rifle and telling them to fight over a glowing dance floor.
Gorilla Showdown, as we’ve explained in detai here, is a frantic mashup of a 12-player arena shooter and a beat-matching rhythm game. To find out how this unusual concept came together, I sat down with Sloth King’s Will Collins to talk about the development process, the challenges of indie networking, and their upcoming eSports debut.
It’s an unconventional premise, so I started by asking Collins about the exact moment when mashing up firefights with DDR-style footwork actually came to be.
“We actually found ourselves making jokes about game ideas, and thought that Gorillas dancing paints a funny picture, then we just kept iterating on it!” Collins explains.
That iterative process eventually spawned a variety of thematic arenas. Players trade fire in pirate coves, irradiated towns, and deep-space stations—a noticeable pivot from the “inner monkey” theme the title might imply.
“We used to have more monkey themed maps, like a zoo very early on, but we later decided that we would go for themes, this isn’t really shown in the game anymore, but the idea is that the game actually features on a gameshow – hence all the cameras around.”
The game’s map diversity is tied together by an underlying intergalactic gameshow narrative, rather than traditional jungle or zoo environments.
Blending standard shooter mechanics with a central dance pad where players must stay on beat introduces complex balancing challenges. I asked how long it took to get the pacing to feel fun rather than frustrating.
“It took many many iterations haha and lots of playtesting!”
Hitting the rhythm on the dance pad also triggers potent power-ups, like time-bending and missile strikes. Naturally, a few of those ideas needed tweaking after early tests.
“We originally had the Boom-Box throw as far as the Bananas – we had our first playtest and it was nuts. The whole lobby would completely spam Boom-Boxes.”
Beyond weapon balance, the studio faced significant technical challenges. Gorilla Showdown is Sloth King’s debut indie release, and they decided to tackle online multiplayer right out of the gate.
“The biggest technical hurdle was definitely learning how to make a multiplayer game as our first project, a decision I have a love-hate relationship with.”
Despite those networking hurdles, the team committed to launching with Steam Workshop support for custom music. For a rhythm game, giving players the ability to add their own soundtracks on day one is a major feature.
“The rhythm games we’ve played before always were the most fun with modded songs – think Beat Saber, so it made sense that we had to go through the technical hurdles to allow the community to make mods!”
Alongside the main dance pad mode, Sloth King has included alternate modes like Infected, Payload, and Banana Grab. Rather than locking into a strict post-launch roadmap immediately, the team is taking a wait-and-see approach.
“We love that we’ve seen people finding enjoyment in the different modes, we know the base gamemode is an acquired taste, so the different game modes make it much more accessible and give some more chill game modes – we have a couple ideas in place, but no rigid roadmap currently! Keen to see what the community gravitates to :)”
With the Steam launch, the studio is currently focused on the immediate future, especially given that the game has already caught the attention of the competitive scene.
“The 48 hours (and next couple days) have been hectic – we’re going to be in a big ESports event called ZLAN in May, so fixing bugs as soon as we can has been super important!”
Before wrapping up, I asked Collins what advice he would pass along to other small indie teams considering an online multiplayer project for their first game. His response offers an honest look at the realities of game development:
“We came into game development with a major underestimate about how hard it would be! For a small team, we fully recommend not doing this and making smaller projects first!”
Gorilla Showdown is available now on Steam.
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