BLOOD RITE

It's a mixture of tower defense with fast-paced resource management, stressful and addictive. The pixel art is good, fits very well with the theme and the audio also combines nicely. Recommended.

I had a blast playing this! At first glance it might seem rather simple, but the further you progress, the more ingaging it becomes! I also really liked all the powers and different kinds of enemies - all of these create a variaty of ways a single level can be played. Definately worth buying, especially if you consider the low cost.

BLOOD RITE is a very interesting hybrid of a clicker/incrementer and a tower defense game. The concept behind the game is really novel and I will admit, despite the small scope, I liked the inventiveness behind it. It's all too rare in this day of construction kit template 2D retro pixel platformers and other junkware flooding Steam (and this genuinely made games failure to reach a broader audience can in some ways be attributed to the pollution that floods the Steam store from asset flippers and RPG Maker using McDonalds employees who think using assets + GameMaker Studio blueprints turns them into Rockstar Games). One important note is that even though this is an amateur project, it does seem to be sincerely and genuinely made. I couldn't find any flipped assets, plagiarism or any other kind of insincere actions from the developer, but unfortunately genuine intentions alone are not enough to produce a brilliant PC gaming experience. Now I think it's important to go over the rather novel gameplay (and the somewhat gory theme, I'm not squeamish, I didn't even close my eyes in that scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, you know what I'm talking about). You take on the role of a high priest in a well, and you have to get your platform to the top of the well. How? Of course, sacrificing your plebians. But don't kill them all off right away. See, the plebs have a job to do, which is a little Lemmings like walking circuit where they pick up some glowy stuff and drop it off. Enough dropoffs, and you get another guy. Great! So first challenge is making sure you have enough dudes to keep generating more dudes, and of course killing them off so you can move the platform higher. But no game should be so simple, and BLOOD RITE isn't. Nasty pixel monsters don't like your pretty cool business plan of blood sacrificing your employees before you have to pay them, and they try to kill you. The solution? Promote some of your dudes to the role of tower defense! Of course, this means they aren't contributing to the important work of picking up light and dropping it off to generate more guys. So you can very see there's a resource loop here and a bit of platespinning. All in all kudos to the developer for coming up with a novel game concept that works out a little bit deeper than face value. It's a shame it wasn't backed up by a high quality technical implementation... the problems here aren't minor. From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard. A choice was made to use obsolete, decades old retro pixel "art" as a substitute for contemporary PC graphics. It's unclear if this is due to lack of budget or talent, regardless, the overall visual quality of the game is extremely low as a result. There's no option to change the resolution and no useful graphics tweaks. There's no way to ensure this is running at the native resolution of your display. There's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision. The game only displays in mobile phone style ultra-pillarboxed aspect ratio. This is just one of many indications this was developed to be a mobile app and not a serious PC game. It's not acceptable for developers to dump garbage like this on Steam when it's not even formatted or designed to run properly on modern PC gaming displays, to the point that this could be considered insulting. The controls can't be customised because the game has such a dumbed down, simplified interface that it's just iPhone screen tapping stuff. The fact that the interface is this dumbed down might be seen as a problem in itself, however... this is a fairly shallow experience if you're the kind of gamer that likes to play games with deep, rich control schemes and interaction. You'll get none of that here. This is indistinguishable from a mobile app, but they put this on Steam instead of the app stores by mistake. Was it rejected by Apple and Google (they do have more rigorous quality standards than Valve does for Steam, after all)? Regardless, for all intents and purposes BLOOD RITE might as well be a mobile app, it has the same limitations and dumbed down qualities. It's impossible to recommend such a game to PC gamers. We don't spend all this money building gaming rigs so we can pretend they're iPhones. These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game. The poor quality of this game is reflected by how many people spent time with it. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the all-time peak player number was only 3 players. This is a remarkably low number, and now, the only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 100,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected. So, should you buy this game? Is this one of the best of the 100,000+ games on Steam? BLOOD RITE has the utterly unrealistic price of around $5 USD, it's not worth it given the defects and shortcomings with the product, especially considering the sheer number of completely free, much higher quality games on Steam. For comparison, the $5 asking price for this game could get you games like "Torchlight 2", "Just Cause 2" or "Mass Effect 2". No pixelcrap is worth $5. If developers want to get paid the same kind of money as real game developers who know how to do graphics properly, they need to learn how to do graphics properly. I think this might have done very well on the mobile app stores it seems to have been designed for. Unfortunately, Steam is not a mobile app store (and I hope it never becomes one). [quote][b][url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/marketing/profile]Profile Features Limited![/url][/b] Valve have marked this game as "Profile Features Limited" at the time of this review. This is usually caused by poor sales figures and low community acceptance for the game (to date). Until this status changes, this game will not give you +1 to your Game Collector badge count, appear in profile achievements or any other Steam meta-accomplishments, nor can it be displayed in some profile showcases. If these factors are important to you, it may be worth holding off before buying this game.[/quote]

very challeging and good

The game first hooked me with an unusual setting. I decided to give it a chance and did not regret it. Very addictive. Pretty challenging gameplay for those who like to think fast.

The game is extremely challenging while still being fair. If you fail, you know it was your own mismanagement of your (human) resources. Winning feels even more rewarding because of this :)

Fun game for some quick action. It seems hard at first but when you get the hang of it, you will be rewarded with the satisfaction of the victories gained with on-point reaction and decision making skills.The concept of the minions that are gathering resources for you, are also a different resource themselves is quite unique that develops into a tense and non-merciful gameplay. Constant reevaluation of the importance of different types of roles fulfilled and where to spend your blood will make or brake your game.

Fun spin on the tower defense genre, and works great on Steam Deck!

pretty challenging but enjoyable tower defense

I played it only for a bit, but it immediately draws you in with its appropriately grim atmosphere. Pacing starts of nice and slowly, giving you enough time to figure out the mechanics. Around stage three you get a good sense of the balancing act of resources that's going to help you reach the top (literally and figuratively). Beating each subsequent stage is rewarding due to the new upgrades/unlocks you get! Am not a frequent Steam player, but I look forward to playing it again when I have some more free time on my hands!