Blood Alloy: Reborn

[h1]What would be a decent start for an Early Access game leaves a disappointing taste as a full game. [/h1] Blood Alloy: Reborn is a 2D score attack shooter developed by Suppressive Fire Games. In BA: R you play as Nia, a cyborg who is able to slide along as well as up walls, shoot enemies and even cut them in two with her sword. Your aim is to increase your multipliers and score as many points as possible, hopefully more than you scored last time, on one of the three levels the game features. Full Disclosure: A review copy was provided by Evolve PR. Let’s start with the game’s visuals, one of its stronger points. BA: R opts for a pixel art style that serves the game well, it not only fits with the idea of the game, it also looks pretty good. The UI is basic but it gets across all the information you need when playing. I may as well clump in the other positives here, the game’s audio. Both the soundtrack and sound effects in the game are good, fitting well with the game and more songs are unlocked through gaining experience points. Lastly, the dev has been pretty quick to fix any serious issues with the game, there have been several updates in the relatively short time it’s been out. Before I move on to negatives, I’ll briefly discuss the game’s unlocks which is more of a neutral aspect. The idea of having everything but the bare minimum locked behind the player’s level is a good idea for a score attack game in my opinion. However, the lack of content I’ll go on to talk about means that these unlocks run out pretty quickly and there’s also a large gap between what I would call the more important unlocks. The first map isn’t unlocked until level seven which means you have to play the first map for at least six times before you can even play another one. It does work well for the equipment and music, since they aren’t hugely important, but I feel like the maps shouldn’t take as long to unlock or they should be unlocked from the get-go. To kick us off with negatives we have the amount of content that the game offers. Sure, it has 63 equipment combinations (three guns, three secondary weapons and seven ‘cores’) but it only has three maps. If the game was far cheaper than it is then perhaps only having three maps would be acceptable but only three maps at £9.99? That’s just not good enough in my opinion, as has been said by others, it simply feels like a paid demo. Hell, maybe I’d even be satisfied with it if there was a high amount of replayability but there isn’t. I’ll talk more about its lack of replayability as I discuss other parts of the game but a score attack game without replayability isn’t a great prospect. I mean, even the majority of positive reviews for the game have less than one hour of play time. This lack of content is why it feels so much like an Early Access game, I feel like I’m just getting a taste for something that I’ll get more of down the line but, as far as I know, that isn’t the case. The next big issue, controls, they’re pretty rough. I’ve played with a gamepad as well as the good old mouse and keyboard and there’s not a huge amount between them, the gamepad might be slightly better. Firstly, you have to click (or press a button) for every shot, holding the fire button/key down just charges up a more powerful attack (one that takes an incredibly long time to charge, frustrating when getting hit by an enemy resets the charge). It might not sound like a huge deal but when the game is supposed to be a fast-paced shooter having to click for each shot slows things down a fair bit when you’re trying to take out enemies, especially the smaller ones who are hard to hit. Speaking of hard to hit, the aiming isn’t great either. You can aim in eight set directions whether you’re aiming with a mouse or a gamepad. As restrictive as this is, I can understand why you might have this for a gamepad but it just makes no sense to have it for the mouse. Having your aim not being directly linked to the movement of the mouse just feels weird, perhaps I’m just not used to it. But like I said it feels very restrictive, again something that’s not great when you’re supposed to be playing a fast-paced game. These two control issues make BA: R quite frustrating to play at times, particularly in high enemy count situations where you really need tight controls, and they’re among the reasons as to why the game doesn’t have much replayability. Why do I keep saying it’s supposed to be fast-paced? Because it isn’t. To be fair, it is pretty fast-paced (and a little manic) when there are a lot of enemies on screen but I often found myself running around the map just to find an enemy because they all seemed to have disappeared, completely killing the game speed. Since you have to rely on getting high multipliers to get lots of points (you even need the highest kill multiplier to be able to heal yourself by shooting down some robot thing, often on the other side of the map) these slowdowns and often complete lack of enemies really hits you. Every time I had this happen to me both of my multipliers (you have one for just killing enemies and one for your use of movements and attacks) went back to 1x as I couldn’t find any enemies quickly enough. Enemy variation is up next. It’s seriously lacking. I’ve played two of the three maps, the second replaced an enemy from the first with a new one, I’d say I’ve probably seen around nine or ten enemies and I imagine there’s probably another one introduced on the third map. The lack of variation is made worse by the fact that every enemy is an exact clone of every other enemy of that type. There’s no variation in appearance, attacks or behaviour. Really this comes back to how much content there is versus the price. Again, this lack of variation/content might be acceptable if the game was being sold at a lower price but at £9.99 it becomes another reason for me to not recommend this game. Lastly, I'll briefly return to the health regen system I mentioned earlier. It's completely broken. You heal by shooting down some robot type thing from a larger robot type thing that's bear hugging it and in return you get one third of your health back, really it should be all of your health back. This health regen thing (I don't know how else to describe it) only appears when you get a kill multiplier of 10x and as soon as you lose that multiplier it disappears. This means that even if you're on very low health, you're going to have to keep your multiplier up while running to the other side of the map to get one third of your health back, chances are you don't make it. What's worse is that once you've got the health the only way for another one to spawn is for you to drop below your 10x multiplier. If you've managed to keep that multiplier on the way there then why the hell would you deliberately drop your multiplier in a score attack game? [h1]Verdict [/h1] Let down by its lack of content, issues with controls and the feeling that it should really be an Early Access game, Bloody Alloy: Reborn simply isn’t worth your time or money. If it gets updated or it goes on sale it might be worth picking up for fans of score attack games in general or those who simply like platforming shooters. [i][url=http://steamcommunity.com/groups/lonerangerreviews#curation]Lone Ranger Reviews.[/url][/i] El K.

I hate to be the first guy to speak ill of a game (in my language anyway) that clearly has alot going well for it but well I do not recomend this game and have asked for refund. The problem is that this game is really more of physics sandbox with the ancient high score indicator as the only real incentive to do well. So there's not really much of a "game" just a clear cut reflex quick-twitch reaction tester. It really hurts to say all this because well damn is it fun to sprint around and ninja kick your way across the screen and roll through a hazard bot holding down a button to charge up your power, while sliding up a wall to fire multiple homing missles at a bunch of training bots and jumping through another obstacle. SOOOOOOO the Adrenaline is great in here man. Unfortantely it's much like a trip to the bearded clam as after they hype there just isn't anywhere fun to go with all of this excitment. There are a very limited set of enemies that behave in a very defined pattern and while the soundtrack and unlockable content is a nice touch there's just not enough incentive to keep me interested. No dynamic enemies demanding my Ninja Skills attention or story elements giving me some loose sense of direction to cling too. The Environments themselves are exactly what you see above and that's it...the whole game's backdrop has already been painted and displayed to you at the top of the Store Page. I understand this game was a failed kickstarter and that may be the reason Blood Alloy is what it is today. It seems like they did it up making a tight physics engine and put a ton of effort into a demo. Unfortunately it looks like they may have than ran out of money to make an actual game. If this is in fact what happened I'll note this as the first time I've actually regretted not donating money to help this thing happen. This is a shell fo a game that is going to be great it's just that now it doesn't look like it will ever get going. Really though this game ENGINE is superb and if it were sitting inside of an audi or bmw frame this would be a must have...instead it's just jammed inside of an old-school VW Van and I'm too old for cross country road trips. This game was an amazing start maybe someone else will grab the baton and run with it. Here's hoping.... No idea how to rate this really. I enjoyed it for exactly 20 Minutes and realized where the title was going (nowhere) and was bored stupid after another 20.....but that ninja, slash, dash, sword thrust hijanx though.... 4/10???

The New Hotness. I've had my eye on Blood Alloy for sometime. I've never passed on the opportunity to play it at PAX East or BostonFIG, and now I am happy to say the final product lives up to expectations. The initial tutorial is a little rough, but once the camera pulls back and the gloves come off, the game does not disappoint. You'll be dashing, slashing, running, and gunning your way through waves of enemies, with nearly reckless abandon, all while enjoying the grooves of a killer soundtrack. It's not a game that demands a lot from you and you'll be unlocking new items, levels, and music every couple rounds. Now for the main reason why I'm posting this review: justification of cost. At $12.99, no, it's not the cheapest game ever made. It's also not the most expensive one, and I can say on good authority that the developer, Suppressive Fire, has been busting their butts for YEARS to get this game out. The results speak for themselves. It's smooth, fast, and most importantly, so far for me at least, stable. People have paid much more for games on Day 1 that can't even connect to their own servers. Blood Alloy offers a solid chunk of content with really fun gameplay for a fair price without ANY online requirements. For a game to be stable on Day 1 in 2016 shouldn't be such a shock, but it honestly is. The game seems to be set up in such a way that if enough gamers support it, more content will follow. You may think that means waiting it out, but it's a catch 22: they can't make content unless you support it, but you don't want to support it unless they make more content. To that I say, give me a break. There's no Season Pass, there's just the game, and this is a game and a developer worth supporting. Watch this game can ramp up over time and become unstoppable. Like I said, it's a solid chunk of content built on a very solid foundation. I would say this seems like an excellent game for streaming. With rounds being (for me at least) under 5 minutes long, and a consistent reward loop, this has the makings of a great game not only for communities to enjoy, but potentially even for competitions. If I had any feedback, it would be that the mouse is very sensitive and is currently unresponsive in the menu; the vertical dash section of the tutorial is pretty punishing; and the menu UI could use a bit more polish and some more options like max camera distance and screenshake level, but these are HARDLY killer criticisms and the kind of stuff that can be taken care of in a patch or two. The game itself is great. G-R-E-A-T great. Pick it up and support a really cool developer who's made a really cool game.

The combat is super fast-paced and intense. The movement mechanics feel powerful, and add a lot of fun just traversing the map. The art and music are sharp, and really suck you into the experience.

Blood Alloy is definitely an enjoyable game, but it just doesn't have enough content to warrant a purchase. I have only played 20 minutes of the game thus far but I already feel like i've seen everything the game has to offer. Blood Alloys combat and movement is it's biggest strength. Movement is very fluid in it's simplest state. You then also have the abilities of dashing and double jumping which make moving around the map and avoiding enemies very enjoyable. Combat involves use of the mouse to aim and shoot enemies. You also have a jump dash ability to attack enemies. These movements and combat made a very enjoyable survival experience. Enemy variety is very good as well. They increase in difficulty to kill as you progress. It turns into a kinda bullet hell type game later as a lot of enemies and they fire in different patterns. Enemies are very enjoyable to kill and require some skill to avoid there fire while also attacking them. Aesthetically the graphics are rather pleasing. It presents it's self in a nice looking fashion that isn't too complex graphics but is still satisfying to look at. Animations are very nice looking too. The soundtrack goes along great with the gameplay. Blood Alloy is a survival game at it's heart. No real levels exist aside from different asthetics and slightly different layouts. So really it's a score attack game to see if you can survive as long as possible. This I would be happy with, but there is a huge problem. There is no real motivation to get a higher score. No unlocks exist as far as I can tell from my current progress. They also don't have an online leaderboard system. The game doesn't even have achievements. It feels like they rushed the release and felt this was a low priority to add. However a score attack game is not fun unless you have a reason to get a higher score. I really did enjoy my short time playing blood alloy. However it has very little reason to replay it. Therefore 20 minutes is as much enjoyable time I got out of it. So until there is some kind of reason for me to play more of it but into the game i'm afraid I cannot recommend you to purchase this. [b]TheIronicGamers rating system[/b] [list][*] Don't ever buy this game. [*]Maybe consider it on a sale. [*][b][u]An average game.[/u][/b] [*]A good game that should definitely be considered. [*]A must play! [/list] Disclaimer: I was provided with a free review key to write this review.

[url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/7871885/]Follow our curator page,[b] OCG-Curations[/b] if you like and want to see more reviews like this one.[/url] THE VERDICT: A game with so much potential, that ultimately wastes it This game...this game made me sad. I saw it sitting there in the pile of games to be reviewed, and I thought to myself "hey jb2097! that's looks rather exciting. I'll give that a go" Because, you see, I didn't really bother to check it out, and just went on a trailer that showed: shooting slashing running up walls and along ceilings like you were Strider, if he'd taken some of Duke Nukems "special vitamins" stuff exploding All good things, and all elements that should should have made an awesome action game. But as the slightly bitter tears of disappointment spilling down my cheeks (and the negative review) will attest - this game is not good, it is, in fact, really rather bad. And it need not have been, but the developers appear to have left it to die. First of all - it's not an action game, but a score attack, skill based shoot and slash em up. That's on me for not paying attention, and getting my hopes up thinking it would be like Contra, Super Metroid, or a kind of side on version of Bayonetta. In it's favour is that it's pretty dynamic, with some really slick controls and nicely implemented abilities (at least the ones they've actually bothered to program in - the game is clearly unfinished to quite a large degree) It feels odd going into detail about a game I don't recommend, and yet it is a shame this game is so incomplete and shonky, because you can see the beginnings of something super ace. You can chain together leaping from walls into sword attacks mid air, and then leap up onto the ceiling, carry running along the ceiling shooting your gun or launching attacks from your sword. These attacks are context sensitive, so if you're sliding up a wall and attack with your sword it will launch a beam that flies ahead of you. If you do the same with your gun it will fire multiple shots that home in on targets. You have a score multiplier, and the only way to get health back is to get it up to the tenth level. At which point a hidden enemy carrying a soldier becomes visible. You then have a limited time to find this enemy and free the soldier, this then gives you health. The only problem being that it can be quite tough getting your multiplier up to 10, and on the second level of the game its quite possible, due to the fiddly design, to not get to them in time. So you have to do it all again, but will most likely die due to having no health. That is, if they actually appear with the soldier - I had one instance where the enemy appeared, but the soldier had pulled a Jean Claude Van Damne and gone AWOL It's an interesting mechanic, albeit one entirely dependant on gameplay balancing that they clearly haven't done....or bug checking either while they were at it. One other side effect is that the music and sound effects all drop down in volume while you're low on health (presumably for a certain "danger will robinson!" kind of ambience to emphasize your impending doom). Essentially the game remains almost totally muted for as long as low health persists, and yet it's that hard to get your health back that you end up playing in mind numbingly boring silence for however long it takes to eventually die. Get your score up to 10,000 and a (underwhelming) boss will appear. Defeat the boss and you can go to the next level. There's only 3 levels, and the second one is annoying the heck out of me. There's no new enemies, or environmental obstacles, in the second level from the first level, and it's design makes navigation a bit of a chore. I've also got stuck on the environment, and had it cause some obnoxious juddering of the camera. Plus it can be a little bit slow to keep up in this level, and frames the view awkwardly. The game just isn't doing enough to keep my attention past it's deficiencies. Mechanically it's beautifully realised, but the content and purpose is somewhat lacking. It doesn't actually explain how to progress through the levels and leaves you to figure it out for yourself. Until you do you'll wonder why they are all locked on the title screen (well - I did, you won't because I just told you) It's also apparent it is unfinished. There's an equipment select screen which shows new weapons, armour and skills unlocking. But try to equip any of them and they don't appear in the game. Use a gamepad and it will allow you to navigate the menu each time you freshly load up the game from Steam, but once in a game it won't work, and you have to come back out and reselect it in the menu. You can still see it doing some things, just not working properly. More evidence that this is sloppy as is. Essentially this is an amazingly fluid control scheme, and well done combat, in search of a finished game. They didn't pursue it being an action game (which was apparently the original intent) and they didn't bother to complete it in this final form either. It shows three levels being available, which is terrible value for money that they should be ashamed of selling at the current cost of over £10. Moreso given that what there is, is still unfinished. It's a pity that they've squandered that initial promise. If it was flatout awful I wouldn't bother wasting all these words on it, but it being dirt cheap is the only way I'd recommend it if you want to see what might have been.

When Blood Ally: Reborn first appeared in my sights I kind of thought it was a game in the vein of Contra. What Blood Alloy: Reborn actually is, is a 2D score attack twin stick shooter set in one of 3 arenas that sees you last as long as you can against waves of every increasingly difficult and numerous enemies. The game has a strong 16-bit visual style and looks good unfortunately I am not a great fan of the camera which rather than centre around the character like most games in this genre seems to always be playing catch up and as such you are forever not able to see things off screen that you really should be able to. Equally this camera catch up actually made me feel a little motion sick at times which is incredibly rare for a 2D game but the developers have stated this is something they are going to be fixing. As you play the game you gain levels which allow you to unlock new levels and gear. There are a lot of different gear options in the game which mix things up but sadly there are only 3 levels and while the levels are different they are simply just themed and relatively small 2D arenas that have the odd bizarre invisible wall. The biggest issue with the game is simply cost to amount ration at £9.99 (or your regional equivalent) the game is a fairly mid-priced indie game but what is on offer sadly feels like either a demo of a much larger game or a score attack mode added onto a game with a fleshed out campaign. I spent my first few playthroughs trying to work out how to access more of the first stage only to be disappointed when I eventually realised I could not. Sadly you can travel the entire distance of the first map in a matter of seconds. Gameplay wise it is a mixed bag. The controls are very twitchy and are a struggle to get to grips with. I played the game with both a 360 controller and a mouse and keyboard and whilst a mouse and keyboard was better neither were perfect. Your normally gun does very little damage but enemies require a lot of hits to kill. Annoyingly you must press fire for every bullet which is a very odd choice. Holding down the fire button charges up a charge shot but this takes far too long to charge and is reset when you are hit. Equally the fact you are trying to kill things quickly to keep your multiplier up makes the charge attack almost unusable. There is also a flippy melee attack that reminded me of Raiden out of Metal Gear Rising which you quickly realise is the most powerful attack in the game but sadly using this against anything but the most basic enemies leads to you getting hit in the process. Health is only recovered by reaching a 10x multiplier and then shooting down a robot thing (whilst maintaining the multiplier) but even then you only get 1/3 back and this is a tall order when you have barely any health left, you are unable to use your best weapon. And you multiplier drops every time you sit and try and use the charge attack. The final kick in the teeth is if you manage to finally get some of this health back the only way you can get more is to lose your multiplier and get back to 10x which is totally stupid and against the whole point of the game for a score attack game. The game does however sound lovely with the official soundtrack also being on sale next to the game. For a small indie game with a lack of content you can’t help but think maybe that OST should have been included with the main game. The game has a lot of promise and if this was an early access title I would be invested to keep an eye on its progress but as it stand it isn’t. At its best the game feels like an early access title and at its worse feels like a score attack mode inside a much bigger game. Overall I could see some people would get something out of this. If this is on sale and you like score attack games then it is probably worth a go but for the majority of people there are much better games to spend £10 on. A COPY OF THIS GAME WAS PROVIDED BY EVOLVE PR FOR THE PURPOSE OF REVIEW. MY THOUGHTS AND OPINIONS ARE HOWEVER 100% MY OWN. This review was originally published on www.thegametutor.co.uk If you found this review helpful join our curator page here: [url=http://steamcommunity.com/groups/gametutor#curation] Curator Page [/url]

Blood Alloy desperately wants to be a Metroidvania game crossed with a twin stick shooter, the truth is it struggles to do ether well. You’re put in the role of a cyborg ninja style character that can fly around the screen taking out enemies and looking flashy as you do it. Unfortunately this doesn’t cover the gaping holes in its control scheme and this is where the game really falls apart. When played with mouse and keyboard the game is a mess and makes some really odd choices like having two jump keys but on controller things become a little easier. Even then though the choice to make the shoot button something you have to press repeatedly instead of the traditional hold to fire that’s been tried and tested just serves to frustrate even more than is necessary. These aren’t the only issue I find with the controls ether, much of the time these controls seem to focus on style rather than substance. The character has a dodge that takes you so far across the screen chances are you’ll avoid one enemy only to land on another. Your sword attack can be done in any direction, but its hit and miss if the game will pay any attention to the direction you’re pressing. I could go on, but I’m sure you get the idea. There are even issues with level design too, sometimes you can shoot through platforms and more an inch to the left and suddenly you can’t. There’s no consistency with the game. On top of all this there’s no guidance on what you’re even doing, you wonder round shooting things until an onscreen marker shows up and you go kill what its pointing too and you’re on your own again until it decides to show up again. I don’t know if you have to kill X amount of these to progress or if the game is just score attack as it doesn’t tell me. You get a brief glimpse at a plot when completing training mode, but nothing to give you any idea of what the hell is going on. The game shows me an upgrades menu, but gives me no idea of how to unlock them and this story continues. . . The Steam reviews so far show a very different story than mine, it seems to be really well received. Maybe if you persist with the game thing improve, maybe it becomes clearer but I have little to no incentive to do so as the game gives me no hint of this and I’m not inclined to continue in some blind hope. This isn’t an early access game, I have no reason to suggest it might improve or get better. Maybe this game just isn’t for me, or maybe everyone else is wrong. I don’t know but I do know I don’t recommend it.

This has a fantastic combat engine, but when you look at what you get, I cant honestly recommend this. 3 Levels, 3 Guns, 3 Sub Weapons, and 7 Armors (3 of which are upgrades to the other 3, and 1 being your starting armor, so can you REALLY call that 7 armors when 3 are just higher tiers? Who would use the LOWER tier??). I want the metroidvania this was originally gunna become, I want it bad, but the fact I didnt even have to fully level to use everything (theres a bug in the menu where you can just select the items and it'll carry into the mission) is kind of hilarious in its own right. Buy on sale for maybe $5, if not less. Otherwise, pass this up. Really hope to see more from these devs in the future though!

Just your all around shooter with fast button tactics. If you ant to have fun trying to get the highscore or impress others on clear time then this game is for you. It's tough but the levels feel grindy with a feel of repetitiveness.