A few updates about my game. I’m currently in talks with a fantastic artist who I’ve met at a few conventions now for a really good soundtrack. I should have more details soon, but either way I’m extremely excited.
This week I’ll be reconfiguring the collision detection system, as it seems I have a few bugs to work out (like the fact the cube moves BEFORE the collision detection system says it can or not). I’ll be cracking on with that all weekend, so hopefully by this time next week my game should finally feel how it will in the end.
I’m also hoping within the next two weeks to make a tutorial level for the first time you ever play the game, so look for this the next time you boot it up.
And that about does it for updates for now. To everyone who reads this stuff, thank you for your support, it’s greatly appreciated.
The art style of Luftrausers is fantastic. Just a glance of the logo conjures up WW2 aesthetics.
I bought Luftrausers months ago for my Playstation Vita in a sale, as it always intrigued me after having played it at the Eurogamer Expo last year. I don’t usually get on with Bullet Hell games, as my precision isn’t as good as it should be, but Lufrausers intrigued me due to its accessibility and stylish graphics. Needless to say, I’m glad I bought it, as Luftrausers is one of the best small games I’ve played in a while. Some may have their fill of the game within a few minutes, but I’ve played this little game for well over 8 hours, and don’t feel like stopping anytime soon.
The game starts out with a tiny cinematic giving a little context on the situation of Luftrausers (and by tiny, I really do mean tiny, its like 5 seconds long). Basically, crazy scientists have managed to create some ultimate ships that can regenerate health if they don’t fire their weapons. You then start your first of many flights in Luftrausers, launching from a submarine every time.
Customising your aircraft is a big part of Luftrausers, with each part you choose having a major effect on the way a life will play out.
Controls are simple enough to learn, but extremely hard to master. There’s the up button/direction, which propels you forward in the direction you’re facing, left and right rotates your ship, and finally the X button fires your weapon in the direction you’re facing. That’s it. Extremely simple to learn, but with the amount of bullets and enemies coming at you it’ll take you a lifetime to master.
There aren’t many enemies to learn about, and chances are,w within 3-4 playthroughs you’ll have met every enemy in the whole game. There are two types of enemies trying to get you which consist of both sea and air vehicles. Each class of vehicle has many variants, from small enemies like pawn planes that literally just follow you around and fire occasionally, to huge bosses that will take up the whole sky or sea firing so many bullets you cannot move without getting hit. Each enemy has different attack methods and movement, meaning some are easier to kill than others.
Being a bullet hell game, you’ll be glad to know that this is actually a fairly calm moment in most games, with the true challenge coming when bosses start to appear.
One of the things that sets luftrausers apart from other bullet hell games is your ability to regenerate your health whenever you’re not firing. Your health is represented by a white cloud that surrounds your plane the more you get hit. Score is completely based around a multiplier that will go up based on how many enemies you kill. If you go a while without killing anything, your multiplier will disappear, meaning you’re constantly in a risk/reward situation, where the longer you continue to fire you’ll probably kill more enemies, but in doing so you won’t heal.
Your ship can be customised in a variety of ways before launch each time you die, with a plethora of body types, gun types and engine types to choose from. Each plane part is unique, and will allow you to do a variety of things, from taking no damage underwater, to simple things like being able to turn faster. It’ll take some trial and error to see what combination of weapons and body parts you prefer, but that’s part of the fun. One of my favourite combinations was a gun that fired 5 bullets at once, a body that took no damage when colliding with enemies (fantastic for killing enemies in the sea that are hard to fire at), and an engine that allowed my plane to go underwater and above the clouds without taking any damage. It does have the disadvantage of only being able to take two bullets of damage before dying, but it’s one of the easiest ways to kill multiple enemies.
Easily one of the most annoying bosses, and the one you’ll come across the most is the battleship. This monstrosity has plenty of health, meaning they’re one of the hardest enemies in the game.
The soundtrack to the game is absolutely fantastic, with tunes fitting perfectly with the 1940’s style and aesthetic of the game. I found myself humming the tunes whilst playing other games, or even just walking down the road. It’ll definitely be a soundtrack that I’ll recommend for years to come, and one that I glad I experienced whilst playing through the game time and time again.
As I said at the beginning of this review, Luftrausers is easily on of the best mini-games I’ve played in a long time, keeping me coming back for more and more every time I boot my Playstation Vita up. What it may lack in content, Luftrausers certainly makes up for in polish and replayability.
I think this main menu sums up the mindless fun that Pressure ensures.
Looking through my games library for things to play for this weeks review, I stumbled upon a game I have no recollection of purchasing: Pressure. Intrigued, I went online and instantly searched for a gameplay video, to see what the game was about. Needless to say, I enjoyed what I had seen and proceeded to instantly download the title and start playing.
Pressure is a top down driving shooter that doesn’t push any boundaries when it comes to reinventing the genre, but does make itself stand out with its fantastic design and art style. You control a car as you race through 30 different levels and 3 bosses, killing as many enemies as possible whilst also trying to race to the end of the level as fast as possible. You have 2 bars that track your progress through a level, your health and your pressure. Health is pretty self explanatory, where as pressure is what’s needed to get your car going through to the end of the level. Enemies will try and steal it, and will drop tubes of it whenever you kill them. It’s a nice system that rewards a player for doing what the game wants you to do, and if you choose to just race, you’re gonna have a hard time getting to the end.
Graphics are charming and lovely, making for a Pixar-like take on an otherwise familiar genre.
Pressure looks and feels like a Pixar film, something I say with high regard for the art style of the game. It has cute little cutscenes which will be shown to progress the story, which are so high in quality you could indeed mistake it for a pixar film. They have some humour, which is always welcome in games. The art style is so polished and lovely, that every aspect of the game, from menus to upgrading your car, all the way to the gameplay itself is dealt with such charm that it’s impressive. Levels change as you progress through the story, from forest and fields to caves and castles, the levels show enough progression that you don’t get bored of seeing the same scenery for every stage, that is, they progress with the story.
Levels are designed in a way that there’s no way to really go wrong, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but Pressure could of come up with more diversity in the way levels are played out. Secret paths or different routes would have done wonders to the games ability to be played multiple times, but what we’re left with is a seemingly linear experience with no diversity.
The controls for moving around is simple enough, with the Right Trigger on my Xbox Controller acting as Accellerator, the A button for firing your primary weapon, X for boosting, and B for your secondary weapon.
The gameplay looks the part, but controlling your car can occasionally feel very “airy”, by which I mean that your car doesn’t feel heavy and can be chucked around the stage when hit by an enemy. It makes controlling your car difficult with many enemies on screen, especially when you’re trying to race to the end of the level as fast as possible. Apart from the airiness of your car when hit, the car feels good to handle, and its rare you’ll hit the sides of the stage, even with the camera changes. As a whole, the controls were enjoyable, if not a bit irritating at times.
Enemies are varied enough to keep a level challenging and engaging, without outstaying their welcome. Killing them is essential for gaining pressure to finish the level.
Your vehicle consists of 4 main parts: the shell, the primary weapon, the secondary weapon, the ram and the buggy upgrades. Depending on how well you do in a level, you get an appropriate amount of coins to spend on upgrades for your car. These can range from a new shell that’ll help you boost longer and increase your health, to a new weapon that fires mortar rounds. These vary up the gameplay, and can be sold as and when you’d like, allowing for some flexibility in how you take on the certain enemies that appear in certain areas. I found that saving up my money and buying the most expensive weapon and secondary weapon was worthwhile, as every enemy died in one hit from then on, allowing me to only worry about aiming, and not enemy management.
Overall, Pressure was a throughly enjoyable game that I had no idea existed. It’s a short ride (3-4 hours max), but that’s just about the right amount of time you’d probably play the campaign before getting bored or annoyed at the mechanics. I’m surprised how much fun I had playing Pressure, and I hugely recommend you play it too.
Disclaimer: The following is an opinion piece. People may not agree with what is being said, but I by all means encourage readers to engage in discussion about the following views and opinions.
I originally wanted to write an article about the frustration I felt towards Double Fine when they announced that Broken Age would be split up into two pieces and the first part would be sold on Steam Early Access. I felt that Double Fine were taking advantage of their fanbase, and were gambling with fan’s money as if no risk is involved. Double Fine themselves had admitted that they had taken their idea to publishers before, only for publishers to turn them down, saying there wasn’t a market for adventure games. For all we know, Double Fine has that entire market already invested in its project, but are acting as if their sales for Broken Age in January are all but confirmed. I decided to skip writing this article in the end as I felt it was a bit hypocritical of me to be frustrated when I hadn’t kickstarted the project, and let it be.
To the public’s surprise, yesterday saw Double Fine release a new game called Spacebase DF9, a game that was conceived during their “Amnesia Fortnight” where the whole company makes new game concepts that may one day turn into a product. I say this is a surprise as Double Fine still have 2 other projects that are yet to finish, and they’ve decided to add a third to the fray.
Broken Age does indeed look pretty, but was it really necessary considering it’s over budget? Double Fine are from the same camp that says graphics do not make a game, yet go out of their way to generate reflections in water, something which I would class as “graphics and aesthetic not needed to fulfil the core game”.
In the past, Double Fine have indeed worked on multiple projects, as many fans have been quick to point out. The difference this time is their use of Kickstarter and Steam Early Access, 2 services that were built to support and maintain indie developers that don’t have access to publishers, something which Double Fine has. In the past, fans didn’t complain about these multiple projects because Double Fine were using publisher’s money, which is the same for every developer in the industry. What makes this wrong is that Double Fine are now messing with their own fan’s money directly, rather than fans just being annoyed that a game has been delayed. It sets a bad precedent that Kickstarter can indeed fail if Broken Age’s sales don’t meet expectations in January, something which everyone seems to gloss over and act as if it’s not a big deal.
I can’t help but feel that Double Fine has been getting a free pass with fans lately. First they overspend on their project which made 8x as much as was needed, and the fans rushed to bless them for making a more ambitious game and being open and transparent with everyone. Next, we don’t hear much about their second game in development, Massive Chalice, and now we get a new alpha game that is still early in development, yet is being sold at a premium price. If any other company were to do any of the above, the gaming industry would be up in arms, telling the developers where they could stick it. But ohhhh no, since Double Fine have a few legendary staff who helped make nostalgic games of yesteryear, fans rush to save them from hostility. It’s a bit ridiculous when you look at it from afar, as Double Fine are still yet to deliver on any of the promises they have made with Broken Age and Massive Chalice, and yet fans are still eager to trust them. Some may claim that Double Fine is composed of 60 employees, and they can’t have people sat around doing nothing, so why not make another game? Which would usually be true in most studios, but when Double Fine have the press and the whole community of Kickstarter watching them, why would you risk your game being mediocre? You’d ensure as many staff were working on the main game as possible to ensure that your reputation isn’t tarnished.
Whilst massive chalice wasn’t as big of a success as Broken Age, it still broke $1million, meaning it easily has a bigger budget than a lot of indie games and Kickstarter projects out there.
Finally, I’m not sure how I feel about early access games recently. I believe that if a customer is willing to buy your broken unfinished game, they should be given an incentive to do so, similar to Minecraft. I bought Minecraft for £8 when it was in beta and was still being fixed and expanded. I felt that was a good price, and it continued to get better and better. With the £8 I spent, I got to watch an enterprising, ambitious and unique project grow into the huge success it is today, whilst becoming engrossed in a diverse, intelligently made world, seeing requests and demands for game additions being fulfilled, brilliant customer service in several other ways and a copy of the game in its entirety upon official release. I was rewarded for my belief in an otherwise unproven product and company. But I’m seeing a growing trend of developers charging premium for this “early access”, like with Double Fine’s recent release. As it stands while I type this, they’re charging £18.99 for the privilege of playing a short, broken game, because apparently at that price it’s already a better game than Fez, Super Meat Boy and Braid, to name a few. Fans should be rewarded, not punished, for supporting developers.
Double Fine have access to publishers, have access to the industry at large, and have a loyal fan base. These means of funding were made for small, independent developers who don’t have access to the same contacts as big businesses, yet Double Fine seem to be abusing the system. They want all the money to develop a game without any of the responsibility. If Double Fine had to go to a publisher and announce they were delaying their product, the publisher would go insane, possibly dropping funding for the rest of the project, yet if Double Fine do the same with fans that invested and they get applauded for being so open and transparent.
And that, my friends, is why I think Double Fine are taking the piss.
Over the next few days/ week I’ll be working on making sure my player doesn’t go off screen (still a bug I haven’t fixed yet) and also adding enemies and pollen to collect (for points).
Once the above is done, the game will be complete in a simple state, and will just require to be polished on top. Polishing will require remaking the menu’s using my own art style rather than the built in unity code, making stages other than open field and forest, and making lots of animations for the player.
I plan to have this game finished and released before Christmas, and will continue to support it afterwards with updates that improve functionality. (such as online leaderboards rather than local high scores.)
Kairo doesn’t have a main menu per se, but pausing the game will give you the necessary information you need to get on your way in this weird and wonderful world.
Kairo intrigued me purely from the screenshots on Steam alone. I was in America and needed some games (preferably indie titles) to play on my Mac to continue my one game review a week New Years resolution. Needless to say, I was absolutely blown away by Kairo and as Thomas Was Alone proved a while back, graphics have nothing to do with how deep and involving a game can be.
Kairo starts as it means to go on: it gives you no context of anything and gives you the world itself to explore; for you to find your place and reason for why you’re there. You start on an island with a throne to your back, with nothing but white all around you. Walk forward a bit and you can see a glimpse of another island in the distance. You explore, hoping that this next island will give some meaning as to why you’re there, for a bit of perspective or narrative, or to hint at what your purpose is, but you venture on to realise it doesn’t. Instead of answering any questions you may have, this new island makes you ask more questions, constantly luring you deeper and deeper into a rabbit hole, furthering your anxiety and excitement.
Some, if not all scenes in Kairo can come across as very creepy. This room is one such example. The music certainly doesn’t help in making your experience comforting.
The world of Kairo is an unnerving place, something which the music constantly reinforces. It pushes you into stronger immersion with each second of play; you’re not quite sure you want to progress, but you feel compelled to since it’s the only way to discover the answers you desire. The game is split up into 3 different worlds, each with their own hub that’ll take you to each room with a problem to solve. This all ties into a bigger narrative, ensuring everything you’re doing is tied together and keeps you going to solve the game’s mysteries.
Puzzles are abstract, giving no hints or clues as to what needs to be done to solve them. It’s through trial and error that puzzles are solved and results are seen for your effort.
It’s hard to speak about the story of Kairo without spoiling anything. The only thing I can say for certain is that Kairo plays with you, ensuring you make assumptions as to where the plot is going, just to give you new clues that ruin your predictions. It’s a game where you kind of make your own story, and hence your own experience. It may sound counter-intuitive, but the game is fairly re-playable (within reason that is). Collectibles are hidden all throughout the world, ensuring that you keep on coming back to sleuth every nook and cranny this game contains. The game even accommodates this through a teleport system that you unlock through completion which will take you to key locations throughout the world; it’s a great way to still keep you in awe whilst also being convenient for the player. Although, once everything is found and the game gives you its secret ending, I don’t believe a person would find much value in playing through again. The world leaves an imprint on you, but one that can’t be repeated.
Rooms and landscapes, although simple in geometry, are absolutely breathtaking. Who says you need to have good graphics to be immersed?
In playing Kairo you’ll be taken on a journey, an emotional one that constantly keeps you on the edge of your seat, waiting for something to warrant the fear you feel playing through Kairo’s world. This experience isn’t going to be for everyone; some may find it boring or pointless, many may even say it’s not very pretty, but for those that do like all the little quirks that make Kairo unique, they will be far from disappointed.
4/5
(If you play Kairo and would like to know some theories about what it all means, check out this guy’s site:
it’s a fantastic break down from start to finish of everything in Kairo, and although it may not be 100% accurate/true, it certainly helps to put a lot of Kairo into perspective)
The main menu that welcomes you when you boot up The Wonderful End of the World. The woman has something to do with the game (I think).
I bought The Wonderful End of the World on the Steam Indie sale a few months back as it reminded me of Beautiful Katamari from the Xbox 360. This, coupled with its cheap price made it so appealing that I bought it in a heartbeat, without really reading anything about the game and mainly judging by the screenshots alone. This past week, I managed to play the game from start to finish, and got every achievement, making sure I explored every nook and cranny this game had to offer, so without further ado, here’s what I have to say about The Wonderful End of the World.
You start the game with the main menu screen (see above). From here you can change the settings if you desire, check out your trophies (they’re the same as the steam achievements), or play the game. Once you start the game, you’re presented with all the levels in the game, most are locked, but its up to you to decide how you go about progressing through them and which level you choose next. The first level you choose gives you a quick and brief tutorial, which sets the tone that this game is a carbon copy of Beautiful Katamari. You get dropped into the level, and have to instantly start collecting items to slowly make yourself bigger, trying to pick up everything in the level before the timer runs out. It’s a nice mechanic, and one that certainly makes you replay levels over and over to try and find the best route possible, but in doing so, it makes the whole game rather short. In some instances during play, it’s hard to determine whether you’re big enough to pick up a item, something the arbitrary score in the top right hand corner doesn’t help resolve. Once your timer is finished or you become big enough to finish the level (whichever comes first), you get a score screen with a rank at the bottom. This rank is determined by the final size you grew to, but is a bit vague when it comes to pinpointing exactly what you need to do for each rank.
This is your character you will control throughout The Wonderful End of the World. This mass of random balls slowly absorbs items which it eventually incorporates into its own shape and size. Controls are simple, as can be seen at the left hand side.
Levels are unique, each having its own taste and design aesthetic, which really adds to the charm and personality of the game. You go from a shopping centre, to a café, all the way up to gobbling up a city, getting bigger and more ambitious as each level is finished. One of my favourite levels is of a 2D billboard town using vector graphics; It’s aesthetically very pleasing and unique, (if not a little bit sickening too) and makes it stand out compared to the game it’s imitating: Beautiful Katamari. One major pitfall of the levels is their size. They’re all very tiny, meaning the 3 minutes you’re given to collect as much as possible is trivial and easy to finish. I found that on my second playthrough I was getting A+’s on every level without trying, and finishing a level well within the time limit.
This was easily one of my favourite levels. It’s 2D billboard system was both unique and charming in how it was presented.
Past the fun and simplicity of it all, The Wonderful End of the World isn’t without it’s flaws. The game has no narrative, meaning that if you’ve never played a Beautiful Katamari game, you almost certainly won’t understand the purpose of the game. You keep seeing pictures of a woman with red hair (seen in the pics I’ve posted), but no context is given as to who she is or of what value she plays in the game. The total game time as well is extremely short, meaning I completed the whole game (100% achievements) in a little over 2 hours (This included restarting my progress and playing the whole game a second time).
As with Beautiful Katamari, there are very random items in the world to collect. This gentleman in the corner certainly stands out, and doesn’t belong in a construction site.
In conclusion, I can’t help but say that The Wonderful End of the World feels more like a college students final year project than an actual full retail game. It’s fantastic proof of the concept that they can program this all from scratch, but the game leaves a lot to be desired, coming across as an unfinished mess rather than a brilliant take on an underrated genre it had the potential to be (much like Beautiful Katamari).
This is a screenshot from my iPhone running iOS 7. The game can run forever and is indeed a endless runner.
So the other day I asked the great community of Reddit for help and advice on where I should go next in terms of optimisation for my current project; Project Dandelion.
If you want to try the current build, click the link below and install the Unity web player:
I do apologise on the quality of the current build. There are 2 different types of level to be generated, one with trees and one a open field, but due to the frequency of the instantiating, it may take you a while to see both levels. Everything also needs to be tweaked, so try not to hit the booster too many times. The one great thing about this build though is that most of the core mechanics are there and working, they just need to be tweaked and expanded upon, so bare with me as I continue to progress in the making of this game.
So just to explain whats currently going on in the scene:
I have a player (the cylinder) that constantly moves forward in the world and consistently moves down using gravity. The players model rotates left and right when the player moves left or right. I at first was only going to play an animation making the player rotate, but this wouldn’t rotate the model, and would screw up any collision detection made by the player.
When a player collides with the white boxes, the gravity variable is increased to 20, meaning the player moves up 20 metres. This very quickly runs back down to -0.5 as the update function is called every frame, and every frame the gravity is made sure to be pushed back down to -0.5. These are all variables that can be adjusted in the future to make sure the feel of my game is spot on. (The white blocks are randomly generated across the scene, and are generated 3 metres below the player so that in the 3 seconds it takes to reach one, the player has descended that amount to hit them.)
In order for the world to generate, I have a separate gameObject that rushes off ahead of the player and generates the level piece by piece. This was fine in testing, but as I incorporate better 3d models in the future, I worry the performance of the game will be affected due to too much being rendered at once.
It was the last point I was worried about and decided to ask the question to fellow redactors about whether I was heading in the right direction or not.
The overwhelming feedback was that I should keep the player stationary, and instead get the level itself to move backwards to give the illusion of moving forwards. Now I had this idea a while back, but decided it was silly and would be too taxing on the system, but something clicked in my mind when most people agreed this is what I should be doing: By having my objects forever instantiate at a certain distance away from the player, I would only ever have to worry about 4-5 objects max, meaning no need to worry about performance!
I’m currently in the process of making this work, but I’m certainly glad I reached out to the community for this feedback, it’s fantastic and hopefully is a step in the right direction for my game.
Evoland has peeked my interest ever since I first laid my eyes on it. Similar to DLC quest, you travel through the world of a RPG, constantly upgrading the gameplay/graphics as you progress. This was enticing as DLC Quest was a very short game taking the mick out of the DLC culture, so I wanted to see what Shiro games brought to the table with Evoland, as their marketing approach was definitely different to say the least.
You start the game as a 2D RPG, reminiscent of Final Fantasy games of yester-year. Only able to move in certain directions, you plod along opening chest after chest. Each chest gives the game a new look or feel, one chest gives the game colour, the other, the ability to move in all directions. It all quickly adds up, and soon you’re walking around the world like you’re in a Zelda game.
I kid you not, this is definitely Evoland you’re looking at, and not Zelda.
The game doesn’t end there, making sure to keep evolving the graphics and gameplay to the point you’re using different systems for different locations. In dungeons you’ll fight like Zelda, pushing blocks to open doors, killing enemies to unlock levers, it all is very familiar, where as in the main world map, you’ll fight creatures like in a Final Fantasy game; a turned based system where you also level up and acquire gold.
Attention to detail is pretty cool here, Evoland loves to flaunt so many recognisable franchises with a little twist.
All of this alone wouldn’t be enough to keep a player enticed for 3-4 hours, so Evoland does have a plot, but I use that word loosely. The plot is only introduced after 20 minutes of playing the game, and even then it’s a sentence or two. This means players will spend the first 20 minutes walking around for the sole purpose of seeing the world around them evolve, which isn’t bad, its just schizophrenic that the game seems to take both the world and the plot seriously, without ever intertwining the two. The plot feels separated from the game itself, so you end up not knowing whether the story is a joke or a serious tale.
The Final Fantasy rendered town is pretty cool, and definitely gave me nostalgia for FFVII.
Gameplay was fine and enjoyable for the most part, but there were times when the dungeons would become frustrating and dubious to finish. Such times relied too heavily on the Zelda mechanics of the game, which was a fairly flawed fighting system, and after dying meant you’d have to start the dungeon again and again. It became annoying, but persistance prevails is the only advice I can give to those wanting to give this game a go.
Loved this shout out to the FFVIII card mini game. Cards can be collected through the main campaign and used to verse the AI in one town.
Pros:
Great little history lesson in RPG’s
Great graphics for each style
Cons:
Plot doesn’t live up to the standards set by the gameplay
Certain dungeons/levels aren’t well thought out, resulting in numerous retries
Overall, Evoland is a good game for a first time studio, and certainly lives up to its trailers and hype for showing the world the Evolution of RPG’s. Where the game falls short though is in its ability to become more than DLC quest’s mick take of the DLC phenomenon, and become a real game in its own right.
Evoland is on sale at the moment on Gog.com for only $5, so I’d say its worth a play for its price.
Hotline Miami is a psychedelic tribute to many retro games of yester-year. It makes killing in a pixel world fun, and makes the challenge of who to kill and when a huge part of it’s appeal.
You start out with a little bit of background, but after a few lines of dialogue you’re straight into the game, controlling your man as he goes around in his car, meeting friends at retail stores, and getting a bunch of free stuff. Every day you get a voicemail, telling you to go out to collect a delivery, or there’s a cleaning job for you at the telephone exchange. Each request sounds strange until you start to realise it’s actually all code talk for exterminating a gang in a certain location.
I chose this mask farrrrr too much
Once you get to that location, you can don a mask, which will give you certain perks throughout that coming level. The beginning masks are trivial, but soon they become very over-powered, like the above “Ted” mask. It adds a good mechanic to an otherwise simple game, allowing each player to have their own play style, whether that be fast and rough, or slow and calm.
Gameplay wise, enemies mostly die in one or two hits, but the same applies to you. It means you either have to plan every action carefully, and watch all the routes enemies take, or do as I did and run around like a chicken with no head (which is surprisingly fun and works fairly well) There’s no health in this, and when you die, you start the whole level again, each enemy returning to their original spawn location. It’s very addictive, and can drive a man crazy.
Killing people with guns can be far too easy, but the noise attracts more people
Gameplay doesn’t differ too much over the course of the game, you do get new enemies to fight who have a bit more health, but none of it has a big impact on the core mechanics, which in itself speaks to the games ability to keep me singing it’s praise despite not changing.
One thing that should be worth noting is the soundtrack, which in itself is a reason alone to play Hotline Miami. Each stage is unique, whilst also emotionally evocative, ensuring you replay levels just for sheer excellence of the music. If you don’t believe me, give the link below a listen, it’ll literally blow your mind:
Hotline Miami isn’t without it’s flaws though, many a time I was crashed out of the game for using my best tactic: hiding behind a door with a gun and shooting men as they lined up. All the points are just too much for the game to handle, which meant I saw a lot of screens similar to the screenshot below:
This happened to me far too often
Pros:
Fantastic gameplay delivers a truly unique experience
Awesome soundtrack that’ll want you playing more just to hear more
A lot of replayability
Cons:
Glitchy as hell
Overall I’d hugely recommend Hotline Miami to anyone. It’s one of those games that just has to be experienced, and no amount of writing will be able to provide it justice.
