When I think about MIT, Hollywood has told me to think of Vegas card-counting. It’s a popular story about some smart kids beating the system. Eitan Glinert and some of his cohorts from MIT’s GAMBIT Game Lab are taking a different kind of gamble. They’ve teamed up to create Boston based indie studio Fire Hose Games. They recruited an artist off of Craigslist whose emailed portfolio was too good to be true and brought on an old friend to help manage the whole thing. While they’ve been in existence for a while now, they haven’t yet shown off any real parts of their first game Slam Bolt Scrappers, though it was first announced a few months ago. So when I met up with Eitan at GDC, I wasn’t expecting him to hand me a controller and crack open the game on his laptop as we sat in the middle of the busy convention center hallway.

Slam Bolt Scrappers was just announced as part of the Boston Indie Showcase which will be featured at PAX East for all of the public to play, but for now I’d be getting an early look. But before we got into the game, Eitan told me about Fire Hose’s background.

Eitan had never planned to make video games, he calls it an “accident.” After studying Biology and Computer Science, he fell into game design after being attached to a science related project that turned out to be a game. From then on out, he knew what he wanted. He entered the graduate program of MIT’s GAMBIT Game Lab and met Sharat Bhat. From there they recruited Ethan Fenn who used to work at Harmonix. They then found artists Jason Wiener and Jacques Pena, and attached Tovah Heller to round out the business side of things. Having such bright minds all in one place led to the acquisition of contract work, which allowed them to eat and pay the rent as they moved towards development of their first game. With the team and some money in place, they began brainstorming and prototyping the kind of game they wanted to make. They decided on a title about architecture, drawing inspiration from physical construction toys like Legos and Lincoln Logs.

While a long way from the game they’d eventually settle on, Eitan showed me a few different ideas they had thrown together. The first was a growth simulator balancing the elements of water, electricity and plants; the object was to grow as many plant blooms as possible. It’s the idea was to juggle the elements to better your score. They then turned into a different building idea with a superhero type character flying through the game world, punching a running dinosaur (which was actually the T-Rex from Dinosaur Comics) and collecting girders to build up a tower in the middle which the T-Rex would inevitably try to destroy. While you wouldn’t technically guess that this superhero build of a game eventually turned into Slam Bolt Scrappers, there are some key elements at play that made it work. Nine months worth of toying with game types finally led to the game they’d be putting all of their time into.

Slam Bolt Scrappers is a brawler, a puzzle game and a furious battle of multiplayer wits. Players choose their characters, outfit them with one of many hat choices including a viking helmet and a hard hat, and send them into battle. The playing field is separated into two (in our two player battle) columns, which is the area in which each player builds. A three by three golden block is stationed at the bottom far corner of each player’s column, which is what they must protect in order to survive. Each character flies around the screen and has the ability to punch the opposing player, or that player’s base which grows in size with different guns, missiles and shields as the game is played. But once you leave the safety of your own play area, your opponent’s guns can turn on you, rather than just your base.

So the trick is to build up your base quickly and strongly. To do this, the player acquires blocks of different shapes and colors by punching out beasts that float onto the top of the playing field. Each defeated beast drops a different building block, which are separated into shapes of different colors. You can pick up five pieces at a time, which trail you as you fly around the screen. You then must place the blocks on your playing field, rotating them as needed in order to build squares, which turn into guns, missiles and shields. The bigger the square, the more powerful your new base piece.

The gameplay is frantic. You’re required to think about the combat, the building, and what your opponent is up to. I destroyed Eitan in our first match, and while he’ll claim that he was busy explaining the Fire Hose story and the game to me, it’s really due to my quick reflexes. Just don’t ask about our second match.

The game is colorful and easy to pick up and play. Due to the fact you can undertake many different strategies to win, its replay value is ongoing. You can technically fly straight into your foe’s base and start punching their home, though in the current build you’re facing a ten second setback (Eitan said this would probably change) if you die. Ten seconds is an eternity in a world where your opponent has this bonus time to truly plan out their own way to bring your demise.

People are going to compare the puzzle element to Tetris, it’s just inevitable, but that’s an oversimplified comparison that doesn’t hold true. You’re not trying to clear anything, you’re building a base and not dealing with falling blocks. You have complete control over where the blocks go. You can even switch out certain gaps in your construction, so that you’re only placing the displaced block pieces that remain. So if you misplace a jagged block leaving only a single square empty, you can actually place a block to fill it and find a remaining area for the rest of the pieces to fit. This is an additional level of control over your standard puzzle game.

Fire Hose’s philosophy involves the idea that small indie teams are better able to find opportunities in the game world. Compounded by some market planning, they put Slam Bolt Scrappers together knowing who would play it and where it can be found. While they’re not announcing where it’s going to land yet, it’s a downloadable game that will work anywhere it actually does end up. It currently supports up to four player local multiplayer, but they can’t yet discuss the online aspect.

Playable builds of the game are being officially revealed at PAX East in two weeks, so I was intrigued to see it early. As they move toward release they’re going to be implementing a lot of new features, including more characters (only two were playable during our preview) and additional hats that will provide property changes for the character. He said they already have a build of a chef hat and a dog-eared cap, which add personality to the solid cartoon foundation of each player.

More news about the title will trickle down the pipeline in the next few months and we’ll be staying on top of its development. After we snag some assets from PAX East, we’ll get them up so that you can actually visualize the game as I described it.