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Bloody good concept, marred by frustrating gameplay



Summary
Death Wish by Anaryu and Krisanna is a survival tower and defense game in 3D. It is an entry into the All Hallows 2013 competition, created by a married couple who share the process of making games as a hobby. Their past games include Aetherion, Avarice, Boutalles, Cast Aside, SkyE and Outlaw City, but they have recently decided to start using Unity to create 3D games. One of these games is BoutallesTogether, which is currently under development. This game is aimed as a short multiplayer game with support for 2 players via network. Now that's cool. However, I did not have another computer to link a multiplayer game together, so this review may be biased towards the single-player mode. My opinion is that it aims for something somewhat like Dungeon Defenders with a Halloween twist.

The story goes that Kayla is a high school student placed under the “Death Wish”, which is when other students post on a certain online blog that they wish to have a person dead, and it actually happens. None of the actual story is revealed in the game. I would have liked to have seen a couple of cutscenes and perhaps a story mode, but that wasn't the developers' intention. Kayla needs to “purify” the curse in her mind, which consists of creating crystals to capture segments and areas, and use towers to defend these crystals from monsters. It's playing short matches on a randomly-generated map, of which you can choose its size and the difficulty of the monsters. The enemy summons monsters to try and destroy the crystals, and if you keep them away long enough, you get certain advantages.


Land of the near dead.


Graphics
The graphical style is vibrant, colourful, and from the looks of it entirely custom-made. The models for the monsters are charming but also somewhat terrifying. They remind me of the Lovecraftian style of horror, where blood and guts isn't the focus, but instead the focus is on slimy things, and creepy things. I like that the game attempted to try a new style of tower defense, combining it with action elements and running away from monsters. It is clear that a bunch of time went into making this game look really good, and nice on the eyes. So I can commend the game for its visual qualities.

The title screen is foreboding and good-looking, with nice ambient music. But when it combines the arrow keys and mouse input, it sometimes makes you select the wrong options by mistake. For instance, when you want to create a new game, the default option is to start the tutorial. Even if you click with your mouse on the “regular game” button, it'll still play the tutorial because that is what is selected by the keyboard. I don't think that this is a good idea, because I kept having to view the tutorial even when my clear intention was to play a new game. Also, it didn't tell you that you can press “Z” to skip the tutorial, so each time I had to view through the entire thing.


A screen you might see often.


Gameplay
I found the gameplay supremely lacking in both entertainment and fair difficulty. I had quite a few gripes with the game's gameplay, that make it not altogether a very fun experience. The camera is too far zoomed in so you can't see much of the full picture of the maze and the areas. Often you plant towers, and run away from monsters so you can't view exactly what happens once the towers start shooting.

There is pretty much no guidance as to how to play the game, apart from the video tutorial. The video tutorial explains some of the game mechanics, but even after about 10-15 minutes of playing the game, I still almost had no idea what each thing did. Did the crystal power up the towers? How long does it take for a crystal to power up? What is the strength of each tower, and what is their weakness? How come sometimes the monsters go after the crystal, and then sometimes after me? Why do the blue rings happen sometimes and sometimes not? So, quite often I feel like the developers have left the player to figure out the game on their own, with little guidance apart from a slightly vague tutorial. In the video tutorial, it says “holding the C key and pressing the magic direction” to indicate building each structure. What are the magic buttons? The visual indicator on the bottom-right wasn't clear enough. It would have far more effective to have an in-game tutorial guiding you through each process. People learn from doing, more effectively than watching.

The game has a very high difficulty, even on easy, making it an unfair experience. Crystals take a long time to construct, during which you must run around in circles for a couple of minutes. Once the crystal is constructed, then it takes about 15-30 seconds for the monsters to destroy it, and you repeat the cycle again. Mana does not replenish fast enough either. It would have been nice to have little blue orbs that you can pick up that replenish your mana, but as far as the mana regeneration goes, if you have no mana left in this game, all you can do is run around in circles again. It would have been nice to have some mazing capability in the game as well, to indicate strategy in the placement of towers.


So low on resources here.


The Verdict
Clearly Death Wish had a lot of potential, and I can see the vision of the game that Anaryu and Krisanna are going for, but they were under time constraints to deliver by October the 31st. But there is a lack of depth in gameplay, and a precedence of unfair difficulty in a game that should basically rely on how fun and deep its gameplay is. I'm under the impression that if the developers work more on this product, it could be a very very fun experience, and enjoyable. But I doubt that will happen, and when they are working on ambitious games like BoutallesTogether, they may forget about games with potential such as this.

Ratings for Death Wish

  • Presentation: 5/10 || Not so inviting to newcomers, video tutorial was good but otherwise unpolished.
  • Graphics: 8.5/10 || Beautiful 3D art and models.
  • Gameplay: 2/10 || Frustrating and shallow, but has potential.
  • Lasting Appeal 7/10 || I have a unique boner for the concept, but its execution makes me sad.
  • Overall: 5/10 || A potentially enjoyable and unique experience marred by frustrating difficulty and general design annoyances.