Bloodmatch

[h1] Janky, Repetitive, and Boring [/h1] Bloodmatch is a decent idea, horribly executed. It sounds harsh but there's no other way to put it. Nearly everything the game tries to do, it does so poorly. The idea is simple, you're a gladiator fighting his way to freedom, one fight at a time. There's a pretty decent variety of weapons and encounter types for such a short game, and it looks decent from a pixel art point of view, I'd almost even say it presents great. Unfortunately the gameplay straight up sucks. First things first, before every fight you start in your slave quarters and can run around talking to people, and opening chests and such for armor for your fight. Then you go to the weapon chest, open it, see what you get, and pick from one or two encounters which can range from animal fights, one on one fights, or hordes of enemies. This is where the first problem is. Every time you die or start a new fight, you have 0 control over what weapon you get. You could get a short knife, a super long range pitchfork, a long sword, a bow and arrow, a slingshot, or other weapon. You also might end up getting no armor at all from the chests around the quarters. So in any fight you could either go in with full armor and a great weapon, or no armor and the worst weapon in the game. This isn't a game breaker since you can just die and respawn but it's just frustrating and wastes your time. I see no reason why your leftover armor and weapon can't carry over since it would incentivize playing more safe. Although all this really means almost nothing at all anyways since combat is so horrifically bad. If you're in a 1v1 fight, the game is as easy as holding S and A or D and holding down mouse 1 and just spinning around getting motion sick as the guy you're fighting can't hit you and just waiting the 2 minutes it takes to kill him. If you're in a gauntlet where there's like 7 enemies trying to kill you, you just do the same thing except now you get hit every once in a while or die within 20 seconds. For a game where combat is the entire game, it's shocking how bad this is. No dodging, or blocking of any kind. It's also incredibly difficult to know the range of your weapons making combat incredibly janky and half the time I swear the enemy just doesn't get hit even as I watch my arrow go through his skull. Overall, Bloodmatch is just a really poorly executed game that does basically nothing right and isn't even worth the small cost of entry. For more reviews, follow my [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/40795588-Eggroll-Recommends/] curator page. [/url]

In terms of DOSMan games, it's my favourite so far; the alternate attacks are a nice touch, and the option to choose different challenges gives it a little bit of replayability. While the voice acting is corny (but a little endearing), the soundtrack is doing a lot of the heavy lifting here. It really nailed the gladiatorial theme. If you're okay with finishing a game in one sitting, then it's worth a go.

The culmination of all previous melee-focused DOSman Games's Games! Bloodmatch is a melee-focused retro FPS game developed and published by DOSman Games. It starts a Roman barbarian warrior as he fight his way through battle after battle in the arena to earn his freedom. It's another DOSman game that mainly focuses on melee weapons with secondary on the side BUT it's significantly different with how the gameplay loop turns out and it ends up being easily the most notable in-house game from them so far! Gameplay of Bloodmatch is unique from what might be expected as right off the bat it features a "homebase" of such. Represented with the holding quarters of the warriors, you're then sent out into the arena sometimes being able to choose. Being a melee-focused game in the style of old Retro FPS games one might expect just circle strafing and attacking until you win and while that is sometimes the case, there has been some sort of an effort to diversify it with level hazards and enemy behavior. On the weapon side of things, there is a huge variety of era appropriate weapons ranged from spears, swords, maces, bows, etc. While there are some weapons that were copied from other games like the sling from Skarab they fit in the theming pretty well. All of them also have alternative fires, providing a slower but much more powerful attacks which is a nice inclusion. This does however, make the ranged weapons THE most effective weapon type in the whole game, if you manage to get your hands on one that is. There's also an armor system and it's main gimmick is being able to pick up armor pieces off of your enemies as you attack them, which is a really cool mechanics they were able to implement given engine limitations. As mentioned, before each fight you start in the holding cells before the arena and these do change as you climb the ranks AND are included with friendly NPCs to talk with. They're even voice acted too! With a variety in quality but it's charming all the same! Stylewise, Bloodmatch features that same old DOS game artstyle that all of DOSman Games's work has used in the past. Very cartoon-y but highly detailed pixel art that looks of the era that they're trying to replicate. Again the sheer amount of new assets made for this game is absolutely nuts. Easily having THE most designs for both the enemies you fight and the folk watching you duke it out. As mentioned eariler there really is only a few designs and sprites taken from previous DOSman titles, everything else is seemingly original. Even just the detail of each arena getting progressively more fancy and bigger complete with new aesthetics that fit the Roman theme is simply impressive for the scope of this game. Overall, while Bloodmatch does still have flaws from it's short scope and limitations from the EFPSE Engine as other DOSman developed titles have showcased. This is easily the most involved game from them yet, a big variety of weapons all with altfires, some variations with some of the enemy fights, and a ton of new assets made for this game. There's even a tiny bit of replay value with achievements and arena fights that you have the choice to choose between. I honestly hope that more DOSman project experiment with their bite-sized form cause there's only so many times you can reuse the same formula with a different theme.

https://youtu.be/B7y-Tkcj-LQ Circle strafing to victory is far less exciting than it sounds.

Low quality buggy nonsense. On second fight a rat spawned outside of arena... and you can't progress any further. Tried to restart the game and the "intro" is unskippable once again. ♥♥♥♥ this ♥♥♥♥.