BE-A Walker

Review

The Eldorado colony was established after the last terrible war on the planet Earth, by what was left of humanity. But it wasn’t easy to build this colony as the atmosphere was filled by a poisonous gas that can kill a human within seconds if inhaled! Thankfully, with a full space suit and helmet, this issue was resolved quickly. The biggest problem encountered since the colony was built is the natives known as the Thuaagi. The colonists tried to make contact with the locals, but the Thuaagi were not interested in talking. Instead, they started a massive onslaught all over the Eldorado Colony with their endless waves of warriors. Even with superior weapons and Mechs, humans continue to lose more territories and soldiers. Only a skilled Mech pilot can help them in Eldorado. Are you ready to BE-A Walker?

Be-A Walker is a side-scrolling action game developed by Tequilabyte Studio and published by Games Operators and Playway S.A. on the Steam platform on the 7^th of May 2020.

The game consists of 6 chapters with several missions each, and 2 modes of play, which are Arcade and Hardcore. The difference between the 2 modes is that on the Hardcore difficulty, your Mech will receive more damage and your main weapon will overheat faster.

As you start the game, you’ll learn how your brother (another Walker pilot) perished on his last mission. Then, you’ll take over his Mech and go through a small tutorial. After that, you’ll start each of your missions from the hangar base. There are usually 2 to 3 missions to choose from, and they vary from retrieving a person, eliminating locals or delivering supplies. However, you’ll have choose who to back on chapter 4, and it will be more killing or repelling attacks than anything else.  Each mission will have each a certain number of credits that you’ll bank up after successfully completing the stage. With the credits, you’ll be able to upgrade your weapons and essential parts of your Walker, which are Armour, Air filter, Energy Capacity and Cooling System.

Each mission will take around 3 to 10 minutes to complete. In your first couple of missions, you’ll have to deal with one wave of natives, and as you progress, you’ll have 2 or more waves to fight. You’ll need to be careful of two things during each of your mission: your damage and your oxygen.  The natives will be attacking from the land and the air. Most of the land units will have bow and arrows at first, but on the latest mission they will also be throwing bombs to your Mech legs and have rifles too. The airborne unit will be landing on the top of your Mech with big rocks on their hands and will start hitting the metal as soon as they land on the Walker. To get rid of these little buggers, you’ll have to move your Mech back and forth to make them fall. In terms of the land units, your weapons will help you to shoot some of them. The Energy weapon (your main gun), will overheat quickly and both your cannon and your artillery (additional weapon) will need to recharge, and that might take up to 30 seconds. Therefore, the only way to eliminate these fury natives is to stomp on them.

But this can be quite tricky, as you have to use to the Mech walking mechanism whether you use the keyboard or gamepad. Some of these little buggers will even manage to run under your Mech feet when they are elevated, and they will now be attacking you from behind, and the only way to kill these native is to step on them by moving backwards. Make sure you keep looking at your oxygen gauge; if you don’t have enough oxygen, you’ll die. Also, if you have another person in the Mech cabin, your oxygen will decrease twice as fast.

As soon as you have more than 2 waves of enemy in the mission, you’ll have an opportunity to call on a droid to either repair your armour or to refill your oxygen (assuming you purchase a few droids before you start the mission). But it will be a short window for deciding which one you’ll need the most.

You’ll also fight your own kind, and they will be harder to destroy, especially the unity with the jetpack.

I really like the beautiful, vibrant artwork.  A great soundtrack as well, and the game runs without any issues. In terms of controls, you can use your mouse and keyboard or a gamepad. Personally, I preferred to play with the mouse and keyboard. It is fun to play, the story is ok, but the game is repetitive.