Thank you Lunar Rooster and Reverb Triple XP for sending us an Early Access code of this game to review!

Sky Noon is a rather unusual first person shooter, but I found it quite fun. For example, there is no HP or health points at all in this game. Players eliminate enemies by blasting them off of the island with guns – for all of the guns are air powered. Players are equipped with one weapon, an ability (which you can change), a lasso, and a grappling hook. There are four different guns you can choose from: hand cannon, which is long-range and very powerful, shotgun (short range but powerful), revolver (super long- range and somewhat powerful), and the machine pistol which is very long range, super fast, but not very powerful. The different types of guns are useful with different strategies.

This is the same with abilities. There are a few varying types of abilities you will encounter, and when you spawn, you start with one. To use your ability, press shift. If you want to change your ability, run into the blue floating ability box for a new one. These abilities include booster, which will shoot you farther in the direction you are facing. This can be very useful when your enemy pushes you off the floating frontier and your grappling hook (every player is equipped with one as well as a lasso) cannot reach the bottom of the island, for your booster could potentially boost you upward as you are falling to make your survival chance higher.

Other abilities include mines, dynamites, and teleporters. All three of these items must be thrown. Mines will stick to any surface it is thrown at, however once thrown, you can press shift at any time to make it explode. Again, all weapons are air powered. A blast of air will shoot in all directions. You can only throw one mine at a time. Dynamites will blow once they make contact with a surface. Teleporters will teleport you to the first place they touch, which can also be useful as you are falling to what could be your death. The last ability is jet boots. Jet boots will blast you upward when you hold shift. The blast is not very powerful, but it could save your life, as it did to me many times.

You get to choose and customize your avatar. You can be Steve, the male character, or Jaz, the female character. As you gain levels from winning or losing matches, more customization items unlock. There are a few different items you start with, and some options are always unlocked but have the Discord logo. You can customize your character in four different areas: torso, legs, hat, and head. “Torso” is a wardrobe of shirts you can choose from, “legs” are the kind of pants you can have, the “hat” section is a bunch of cowboy hats of all different styles you can wear, and “head” is a gallery of bandannas and a couple of small tattoos you can choose from.

A few of the game modes are cart, free for all, king of the hill, duel, and time trial, which is single-player. Some of these game modes involve separate teams, and these two teams are Minutemen and Cartel. In time trial, you must go through each golden hoop in a certain amount of time. “Cart” is where you are to push the cart along the tracks by shooting it with your gun or whipping it with your lasso by pressing Q in order to destroy your opposing team’s fortress. Free for All is where players will simply attempt to shoot whoever they please.

The duel mode is just a fight between two players, where if one player wins three rounds, they win. If a round is not completed within two minutes, the game will start overtime. There are three different duel maps, each meant to not accommodate more than a couple of people: Turbines, Tinytown, and Standoff. These maps are all super fun and different in their own way. King of the Hill is a match in which a spot anywhere on the map is selected randomly and your team must stand in that place for the longest amount of time. Once a certain amount of time has been spent in that spot, it will change to a different location. All of these game modes are fun, but my personal favorite is probably King of the Hill.

Though the game offers a descriptive tutorial which you can replay at any time, the controls still need explaining. Use WASD to move, the space bar to jump, mouse to look around, left-click to fire, and hold right-click to use your grappling hook. Press Q to use your lasso, which can pull enemies toward you or make the cart move if your weapon runs out of ammo (weapons can “run out of ammo” if you use them too much).

The computer graphics that make up everything you see in this game are not bad. I generally like this art style and I think it’s cool and very detailed, especially on maps and your avatar. These graphics make the maps really detailed, and the avatars very descriptive with the customizations they have been assigned. Sometimes when you launch the game (which takes forever by the way) you will not see the pupils of your avatar’s eyes – just white. It’s kind of creepy. This will fix after a few seconds though.

The music isn’t bad, either. It does a good job of recreating the wild west feeling – what the whole game happens to be themed on. There is almost no music during the battle, which is appropriate because I wouldn’t want something to distract me during a fight. The sound affect are also fitting. When you fire your air gun or use your grappling hook the sound does remind me of something like that happening, so no complaints on sound at all.

I thought this game was awesome. It’s so fun, but if you don’t have any Steam friends that are willing to buy this title, then don’t buy it. If you do, however, by all means. Sky Noon deserves a better player base, because this title is fun but nobody plays it. I hope there's more players on when this title leaves early access. I love this game, even in practice mode when there’s nobody to fight against except the dummies. There aren’t any moral warnings besides cartoon violence, too. So I would recommend Sky Noon to anyone who has Steam friends willing to join them.