Curse of the Deadwood

It is a great game to chill

Bottom Line: Curse of the Deadwood is a decent game that I ultimately recommend picking up on a sale; if you plan to play co-op, the value goes up a bit since playing with friends always makes horde games better. Curse of the Deadwood is a twin-stick/zombie horde shooter with some unique elements which unfortunately get bogged down in poor level design and some performance issues. I played the game solo throughout, though there is couch co-op capability. I kickstarted this game many (many) years ago and received a Steam Key upon release. Time to complete: approximately 10-15 hours Story (no spoilers): The story is decent, with a twist on the zombie horde game by using woodlings instead of the typical zombie humanoids. You play as Lathe, a Woodling fighting back against the eponymous curse, and Roguard, a rock golem who has forgotten his past. The game has a few twists, though they can feel unearned due to little time with the characters. That said, the story moves the game forward and gives you good enough reason to progress. Performance: 100% of my time was on Steam Deck. Good performance on Low settings. I experienced some stuttering going up to Medium and very low FPS on High. A few crashes soured my experience, though a few patches seem to have mitigated the issues. Art Design: Fantastic with lush environments and colorful cutscenes. The cutscenes use a storyboard style which works fine, but the vibrancy and good VA beg to be animated. My guess is the team ran out of time or money (or perhaps both). Level Design: While the environments look fantastic, the level design is disappointing. Most levels are wide open spaces used for little more than shooting at wood-zombies. On top of that, many of the areas within a zone look the same. As noted above, it all looks great but gets tiring after so many similar areas. There is some exploration to be had and collectibles to find, but given the sameiness it is easy to get lost. However, the number of collectibles is manageable if that's your thing, and almost always lead to power-ups for the character. Gameplay: Standard twin-stick shooter gameplay with multiple special attacks, weapons, and upgrades. Re-specs are always free so the player is encouraged to try different combinations of abilities. The biggest issue with gameplay is the auto-aim on controller. The threat detection for the auto-aim can be terribly frustrating. One certain enemy rushes the player and explodes, necessitating quick reflexes to dispatch them. But when the auto-aim doesn't register that specific enemy until too late, it can feel unfair. This is exacerbated by the late-game enemies which are very spongy. All in all, Curse of the Deadwood is fun if you can look past the issues indicated above, especially on sale.

unplayable

i am not much of a gamer since i was younger but Curse of the Deadwood brought me back to my childhood. the artwork and story makes me smile. i work at the company that created this game and im so proud. great work team

**Full Disclaimer I work at Steamroller Animation (Not on the Game Dev side though)** I was interested in Deadwood since before starting at the studio and my opinion is purely my own. I've had a lot of fun playing Deadwood. It was one of the first games I installed on my Steam Deck (and I've only played it there) so while I can't speak for the issues people had in the past, I'll assume the last patch fixed most of them since it runs smooth like butter on the Deck. Really fun twin stick shooter, I love the dual character mechanic, it makes the Ranged/Melee make sense in universe in a fun way. The sound design is beauyand makes every shot/hit feel like it has weight to it. The story and world are pretty interesting, not your average fantasy. All in all the perfect game for a chill afternoon or to play during your lunch break!!

Very cool game. Visually stunning. Has an arcade feel to it with just enough depth to keep it interesting. 2 big thumbs up!

Ilość przeciwników wysypujących się na poziomie "easy" jest niedorzeczna. Gra jest pod tym względem niesamowicie męcząca, to są niekończące się fale wrogów, ciągle tych samych, tyle że coraz mocniejszych wersji siebie im dalej w grze. Pod koniec gry ma się wrażenie, że podstawowa broń po maksymalnym ulepszeniu jest na nie za słaba i cały czas trzeba się wspomagać dodatkowymi giwerami. Upgrade broni też jest mocno średni, bo nie można wybrać wszystkiego, tylko trzeba się decydować czy chcesz mieć np broń mocniejszą, która strzela wolno, czy słabszą, która strzela szybko. Taki wybór tak naprawdę niewiele zmienia. Ostatni boss na "easy" jest dla mnie nie do przejścia, wolę nie wiedzieć jak jest na wyższych poziomach trudności. To ma być "easy"?! Do tego dochodzi brak mapy, levele są dosyć duże, co dodatkowo utrudnia orientację, często się gubiłem, co w połączeniu z wolnym poruszaniem głównego bohatera i odradzającymi się przeciwnikami niesamowicie denerwuje. Jako zaletę wymieniłbym wygląd, który tak naprawdę przekonał mnie do zakupu. I to chyba jej największa zaleta. Technicznie natomiast nie jest dobrze, silnik gry wydaje się działać w 50fps a nie w 60fps, po zablokowaniu na 50fps obraz jest dużo płynniejszy niż w 60. I to jest najlepsza wartość jaką udało mi się znaleźć, żeby gra działała w miarę płynnie. O płynności 60fps można zapomnieć. Podsumowując, na dużej obniżce można sprawdzić, do połowy sprawiała mi jako taki fun, od połowy już tylko frustrowała.

This feels like the kind of game I could waste an entire summer holiday on when I was younger. The art looks amazing, I love the soundtrack and the gameplay is very fun and simple to pick up. It's not perfect, I feel like some mechanics could be improved on (the character is pretty slow to turn around, and the height difference can be annoying at times where you feel like you're hitting an enemy but the bullets are flying over their head). The biggest drawback though is the performance, I really hope there will be another patch to address that. I have well over the recommended specs, but because of FPS drops I found it hard to play more than half an hour at a time. All in all, I would recommend to wishlist this game and get it when it goes on sale.

A beautiful little game with a great story and world. I'm not normally a twin stick shooter person so I had a lot of fun with the gameplay!

So I work at the company that made this game. While I didn't work on this game directly, I was able to receive it for free, and I really enjoyed it! It was fun and challenging in it's default Medium mode. At first, I thought you had to play it multiplayer, but it works just as well as single player. I also liked that in the Medium mode, you couldn't kill all the monsters with just one type of hit. You had to use both the smash and shooting types of attack. Music is a jam, and the art was great. I did experience some lag at first, but it might be because I played using a laptop instead of a desktop CPU. I started to not notice it or it went away after the tutorial area. When I lowered the graphics in the options menu the second time I played, it was a lot better and smoother, so I recommend that if you have lag. Plus, I would like to have the option to save outside of just the checkpoints because there was a long stretch at the beginning that I couldn't get pass and I wanted to take a break in the middle of it. Besides that, I think it's a fun, light, and casual game!