Undead Horde

Review

(Early Access Review. As an early access release, you can experience bugs, content and or optimization changes. If you are not excited to play the title in its current state and to help support the title to full release by reporting bugs and requesting additional content, you may want to wait for further development.)

Welcome, Necromancer: Driven deep underground by the human race eons ago, forever separating the world of the living and the world of the dead. You are tasked with reclaiming that which has been stolen from the dead. Raise your brethren, so they may fight again, lead them to victory as you reclaim your world, village by village. Raise fallen enemies to fight as your minions, build your army of the undead from the gallery of minions you unlock as you slay your way across the zone. They will die in battle, no problem; we will turn the living dead against them. Collect all the precious loot you can carry, sell it to buy better equipment. Upgrading your equipment as you go, build up your power and stats, choosing which powers and weapons fit your play style. The time is at hand; the dead will no longer be shunned and buried away!

Released and self-published on March 6, 1019, by the developer 10Tons Ltd, this is their 13th release on Steam since 2014 (not counting DLC's).  They started their career with one of my favorite top-down games, Crimsonland. The rest is history in the making, as they put out hit after hit. This title is no exception; it is an interesting genre blend, tagged as an indie, action, adventure with RPG elements. It is also part strategy, hack & slash, and dungeon crawler all wrapped up in a fantasy theme. It has a pleasant low poly graphic's style. Full controller support (I was more comfortable with K/M). All controls are re-configurable, including controller layouts. Featuring a ton of weapons and upgrades along with a level system adding additional character depth. Item's use a classic RPG stat system you will be familiar with if you have played any in the past. There are some Options: including anti-nausea camera snapping and a streamer overlay. Music and sound effects volumes. Graphics have 3 presets to use, along with some advanced settings to customize your experience. You may also have up to 4 game profiles.

Our gameplay begins, and we learn the basic mechanics of the game. We must talk to the Crypt Keeper who will give us our first quest. He guides us on how to summon our first minions from the summoning statues. There are many of these to unlock as we conquer the lands of the living and get the needed kill counts per statue. From here we will continue to our first fight and learn combat. Once the battle is won we will continue to push further out into the world, claiming back more and more land for the dead. Along the way you’ll collect weapons and power-ups that you can use to strengthen your forces stats, and your own. These include powerful rings, books, skulls, and amulets that all have custom stats that customize your gameplay. Your staff and various melee weapons also are imbued with stats to improve your character’s overall performance. Your rings have 2 slots and are a castable power that is dependent on mana; they offer various effects and perks for your minions and yourself during battle. As you earn XP you will also level up your character and get to choose from 3 upgrade cards every time, all with varying stats that once again allow for customizing the game to your play style.

I must say, quite a fun little indie game. After 5 hours of gameplay, I am only a 1/5 of the way through the title. As an Early Access game, it has a solid foundation in place, with 36 levels and 44 secrets currently to discover, and more coming as it comes out of early access. Depending on your play style you should easily expect 15 to 20 hours or more. It does have an intriguing mix of genres, being able to participate in combat along with ordering your troops gives more of a sense of control and accomplishment I feel, than if we were unable to interact in combat. The questlines are varied and in multitude; the game does a great job at helping you to track all open quest via text in the center on your play screen. At a glance, you see which quests are still active and what they are, and there is also a guide system that utilizes arrows to point way to active questlines. All in all, another great release by 10Tons Ltd. You get plenty of game time for the cost, replayability features are being added also to help improve the titles replayability factor. I did not run across any issues or bugs during my gameplay, which for early access was pleasantly surprising.

Review written by DamageInc.for Zeepond.com!