I have felt a range of emotions since first learning about an upcoming game from developer Tequilabyte Studio called BE-A Walker. My first thought was “GIANT MECHS I LOVE IT!" and then my second thought was “OMG not only are you blasting away those puny humans with your awesome weapons, but you are straight up STEPPING ON THEM and turning them into piles of goo. Gross, but… awesome!" Those initial thoughts hold true. Yes you are a bad ass giant mech, and being someone who grew up on a steady diet of gory video games, using said mech to stomp out people like bugs is something I can get behind. Here’s the trailer I’m talking about in all its glory.

But then you learn of the premise behind BE-A Walker and things get a little more somber. The game takes place during a time when Earth is overpopulated and dying because of it, so humanity sets out to find another hospitable planet to move to. They come across a planet called Eldorado which is entirely Earth-like except for the atmosphere being unbreathable to humans. That’s a problem that can be overcome with science and technology though, so Eldorado becomes the target for a new home for Earth’s inhabitants. There’s another big problem though, and that’s that the native population of Eldorado isn’t going to just let Earthlings waltz in and take over, and they also just so happen to be an extremely combat-capable war-like race of people.

So really the premise in BE-A Walker is filled with all sorts of moral quandaries, and the game lets you decide which side to fall on. Playing on the side of humanity means you’re trying to eradicate the native people, but you really have no choice as otherwise your own race will die off. Or you can team up with the native people and fight back against your own race. Sure, that makes you a traitor, but you’re also doing the right thing by not wiping out an entire native civilization. Here’s a trailer from last year that better reflects playing on the different sides.

Of course, if you don’t care about any of that and just care about the shooty shooty and stompy smashy, that’s perfectly fine too. BE-A Walker features a huge upgrade system and the ability to customize your mech with all sorts of cool weapons and gadgets. And while BE-A Walker is just an abbreviation for Biped Enhanced Assault Walker, the game really does want you to “be a walker" as just moving your mech requires you to move one leg at a time and surprisingly enough that can play a big factor in your strategy and potential for success. I mean, you ever play QWOP or Daddy Long Legs? Walking is a surprisingly complex and difficult action that we just take for granted every day! If you’d rather not add all that to the equation though you can have the game automate the walking for you so you can focus entirely on smashing and blasting the enemies attacking you.

Chances are that you may already be familiar with BE-A Walker since it arrived on the Nintendo Switch about a month and a half ago, but come May 7th it’ll also be arriving on iOS and Android, as well as on Steam where there’s currently a demo available to play. I pretty much paid no mind to the Switch version when it launched due to my staggering backlog of games on that platform, so I’m excited to give the mobile version of BE-A Walker a spin when it arrives in just under a month.