Having worked in a grocery store throughout my high school and early college days, I am well aware of the danger that is an old person behind the wheel of an electric scooter. Nothing is safe once they toss their cane in the wire basket, shuffle their old legs onto the platform, and put the pedal to the metal. The dangerous mixture of failing vision, poor reflexes, and failing coordination, make these drivers some of the most wreckless around.
While true carnage born of an electric scooter mishap is nigh impossible, that’s not stopping some game developers from taking the idea to a new extreme. In Coffin Dodgers, Milky Tea Studios cranks up the danger to 100, and puts your life on the line.
In Coffin Dodgers, the Grim Reaper is in town and he’s not leaving until he has some souls. The town’s seniors decide that the best way to sort out who gets to live and who dies is by having a racing event where the losers are quietly swooped away by the Reaper, while the winners get to live…at least a little bit longer.
After choosing to play as one of a handful of seniors, players partake in races that take place in the town and surrounding countryside. Powerups litter the track, giving players the ability to, among other things, shoot submachine guns, rockets, or create oil slicks that slow down the other racers. Melee attacks can also be used to disrupt other racers, though these attacks obviously require close proximity to opponents.
Upgrades can be purchased using the rewards from the races, and players have the ability to customize their scooter to their heart’s content.
At Coffin Dodgers’s core, it’s Mario Kart with a geriatrics theme. As is the case with these types of racers, they’re much more fun playing with a group of friends, than playing solo. The single-player experience is good fun, but racing against A.I. only entertains me for so long. The game’s multiplayer experience is a virtual ghost town, though, so I was unable to find a multiplayer match to join in on. Fortunately, local multiplayer options ensure that if you live with friends or host frequent parties, you’ll all be able to jump right into Coffin Dodgers for some silly racing experiences.
A ghost town of a multiplayer community isn’t uncommon for small-scale PC games. Luckily, Coffin Dodgers is a pretty fun game on its own, and I imagine is great fun to play with others through local multiplayer.
