WeaponBirth: Game Chill Demo

Intro

"WeaponBirth" is an action RPG that was being developed by WolfCoder using 3D GameStudio and was created as an entry for the Game Chill 2009 event. An event that gave developers a little over two weeks to put a game together about opposing forces. The event also required the player to be able to play as either side of said struggle. Unfortunately the time constraints of the event and issues with the limitations of the engine itself insured this project is a barely functioning mess. A factoid that even the developer admits to with the download being titled "WeaponBirth Barely Working Demo". As such it's really hard to hate on this project for being the hot mess that it is. After all, if you jump into this project you already know your in for a rough experience.

Getting the Demo in 2024

I normally wouldn't include a section for this, but the offsite download no longer works. Thankfully WolfCoder has uploaded this project to his/her/their locker. So all you need to do is go to their profile, click on locker, go to the second page of locker files, and download weaponbirtha4.zip.

Story

Sadly the demo doesn't contain any narrative elements. This is because WolfCoder simply ran out of time to include it.

WolfCoder
There was this backstory about
a battlefield where the two finally meet and clash but I'm
out of time.

A factoid that is rather disappointing since I think a quick text crawl or a few text boxes explaining why the two sides are fighting would have been a nice inclusion even if it was short and centered around the two groups ruling different parts of a land mass and not being satisfied with their current borders or fighting over a recently discovered resource that rests underneath or at a border they currently share. After all, wars have been fought in the real world over control of bird poop before. A factoid that sounds weird, but bird/bat poop which is also known as guano is a really good fertilizer and some deposits were worth millions of dollars. In fact, bird poop was so valuable in the past that it led to the United States instituting a law to help them claim islands that were rich in the stuff if they hadn't been claimed already. Suffice to say I think a quick blurb would have been enough even if the reason for the war sounded ridiculous to some or even most.

Gameplay

On the gameplay front the game is pretty simple with the player moving with the arrow keys, performing their basic attack by pressing the z key, and being able to jump in order to dodge projectiles and sword swings with the c key. As for the two sides each group is comprised of two units. One team is comprised of cat and bird furries. Both of these units have ranged attacks with the cats having a limited range that involves them trying to pepper targets with arrows while the more angelic bird based units throwing around gravity spells.

The other team is comprised of wolf and fox based furries. The wolf based unit is the only one in the game that utilizes a melee attack in the form of swinging a sword. A factoid that makes the wolf my least favorite character since it has the shortest range of any unit in this game. Though, I suppose it is somewhat appropriate if your aware of the Shinsengumi or the Wolves of Mibu. The fox unit on the other hand can throw around fire talismans which also fits the apparent Japanese theme of the team.

At any rate upon picking a unit and side to be on your thrown on top of a mountain in order to duke it out with the other side. Thankfully friendly fire is on so you don't have to worry about incoming spells, arrows, or sword swings if the unit sending those attacks is on your side. Of course killing units really doesn't net you experience in this game as far as I can tell. So despite being an action RPG you can't actually level up.

Another thing to be wary of is dying in the demo since unlike your allies and enemies that have an infinite number of apparent respawns. If you die it's game over and your simply left to stare at the action or stare at the side of the mountain if you were pushed or deliberately jumped over the side of the cliff out of curiosity. Another issue to be aware of is that the game can and will crash. Though the length of time between crashes is rather variable, but inevitable if you stay in the game long enough. I'm a bit less sure if the game will crash if you die, but I'm not willing to let the game play out in the corner of my screen for minutes or hours at a time in order to find out.

Graphics

Graphically the game is interesting since it seems to rely on a pseudo 3-D environment. At least it comes across that way since the mountain or cliff top is a flat plane. Add in the fact the characters look like 2-D characters you'd see in a game made with RPG Maker and you have a game that is interesting if your into the early days of 3-D gaming.

Sound

On the sound side of things the game is rather lacking in my opinion. This is because the game lacks any sort of background music. So the only sounds you'll be hearing as you play the demo are the sound effects of the various attacks going off. And considering the computer loves to spam attacks rather endlessly. Your going to be hearing the sounds of firing arrows, sword swings, and spells being launched a lot.

Conclusion

"WeaponBirth" is an interesting project, but it's pretty clear this project needed a lot more time to cook before it'd be ready. And based on some of the comments by WolfCoder, I'm left to assume the reason this project was ultimately cancelled is because any attempt to fix the stability issues in the demo would have required reworking the entire project from the ground up. And if that's the case you might as well start with a clean slate with a new project which is exactly what happened. Though I suppose that's a story or review for another time. Though I'm still left wondering why this project is called "WeaponBirth" and not "FurryWars".