Shillelagh

It's not very good, and it's not very hard. My first run got to wave 27, but my game started freezing halfway through wave 25. The tree planting mechanic and spirits are interesting ideas, but firing as fast as you can click doesn't feel great.

[url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/38888018-United-Critics/] Please follow [b]United Critics[/b] for quality reviews[/url] [h1]Good things:[/h1] This game start out with an interesting concept about a hero defeating the hydra but since hydra is immortal there was the last head he could not kill so he just throw it into the abyss and with time the hydra regrow and now we a single weak druid using a magical weapon that can both take and give life have to defeat the hydra. The moving and jumping and shooting feels ok but the best thing about this game for me is the music. [h1]Bad things:[/h1] Game story concept is fine and defeating the hydra would be cool but each time we defeat an enemy we must at the same time plant a tree to get special projectiles. The strange mechanic is that trees grow a big green square above them that when you shot at breaks and create a special projectile that is circling around you. While the concept seems ok the execution is bad as to shot that projectile you use right mouse button but by pressing it you don’t shot that projectile so you have to hold right mouse button in order to summon that projectile and then you can try to aim it but sometimes the projectile is close to you and is easy to aim and sometimes it is far way and it is hard to aim as you don’t really know where it is in the air and you can end up with a projectile that you hold up behind the enemy and that will just waste the projectile and your time and will do no damage to enemy. Also enemy projectiles destroy your trees that are the only source of your strong projectiles that you shot with the right mouse button as the ones you cans hot from left mouse button are pretty weak. So the more enemies there is and the more they shoot the weaker you get as the trees die and you get no easy way to defend without these special projectiles so in the end it is just a snowball effect that works against you. Also when enemies spawn they destroy the ground so with each enemy you get less and less room to dodge enemy projectiles and less and less place to grown the trees and more places to fall to your death. What surprised me were the errors in the intro movie. I have never seen so many spelling errors and mistakes in just a few sentences. Things like “It your your time druid” instead of It’s your time druid or “Hero slay” instead of “slayed” etc. I think this game was just quickly made and never tested. [h1]Conclusion[/h1] This is a bad Devils Daggers clone with frustrating and boring mechanics. Overall score 3.5/10

Reading a bunch of these reviews it's pretty clear that everyone who disliked this game struggled to understand how to play. I don't fault them for that, but they do share a lot of false or misleading info on game mechanics so I thought I'd try to clarify some things. There are two attacks, a weak attack (left mouse button) and a strong attack (right mouse button). The weak one is firing your Shillelagh like a pistol, holding the button will auto-fire slowly, but you can tap click to fire as fast as you're fingers can make it. You're mostly going to use this to shoot leaves to get solar spirits, or early on before you've grown enough trees you have to use it to kill enemies, but most types of hydras take a lot of these weak attacks to kill so you can't rely on it too much. The strong attack is commanding the Solar Spirits (the glowing cubes that fly around you), which you get by shooting the Leaves (big green cubes) that grow on the trees. The solar spirit are a ONE HIT KILL on all enemies, but the attack is harder to control. If when you hold down the right mouse button every solar spirit will fly to where you're aiming, and keep tracking until hit something or they go too far out of range. They'll track as you look around and return to you if you release the right mouse button, as long as they haven't flown too far away, so it takes some practice to get good with the strong attacks, but they will be your primary source of damage as the game goes on. Enemies will not spawn under any of the platform that has grass on it, so that is your safe zone you will want to defend at all cost. Strategically plant your forest and use the solar spirits to survive as long as you can as the pace picks up and the hydra abyss rains down on you. I've started to use this game as warm up for my digits before playing Apex Legends, and my single fire Hemlock is shooting like a 301, straight cracked!

The art style is decent, but that's about the only positive thing I can say. Having a semi automatic fire weapon, but then having no fire cap or consequences for just spamming as fast as you possibly can, is a recipe for disaster. No one wants to repeatedly left click their mouse button indefinitely. You either need a reload mechanic, or a fire cap, or an accuracy mechanic, or anything. The whole game is very heavily inspired by another game called "Devils Dagger". And unfortunately while it does try to change the formula slightly, it isn't nearly enough to justify it's existence and the whole game feels extremely rushed and amateurish. Especially when it is trying to be sold at the exact same price as the game it is copying, there is no possible way I could recommend this. I have no problem with being inspired or even just blatantly copying ideas or entire concepts for games, that's how genres exist, if it isn't broke don't fix it. But if you go that route when developing/selling a game you either need to be able to match the quality/content of the game you are copying, or you need to be different enough that you can justify why someone would want to play your game over the other one, OR you need to just sell at a lower price point to make up the difference. And this game does none of the above.

Don’t let the ease in which you defeat the first few enemies fool you, this game will melt your face off. Shillelagh quickly becomes a hectic and fast paced game of survival. Call forth the power of the green to destroy waves of hellish hydra that burst from the surface underneath. You will be driven harder and harder to defend your grove of trees while a black metal soundtrack makes your ears bleed. To survive, keep your head on a swivel, keep the green rooted in your soul, and keep the black metal in your heart. In these depths you [b]will[/b] die, but what matters more is how fiercely you lived.

Got this game because I love devil daggers. The soundtrack is awesome and the gameplay has a really unique twist.

Let me open by saying I am not good at this game. I have the reflexes of a dead raccoon, and I'm playing on a PC that would have been modest by 2013 standards. So, I don't really have a lot to say about the gameplay other than that it's enjoyable and (in my opinion) difficult, but I enjoy punishingly difficult things. Not sure how the difficulty curve continues, but as far as I've gotten, it starts off deceptively easy, and then very quickly throws you in the deep end. If you're not constantly aware of your surroundings and dispatching enemies quickly, you won't last long. You'll also learn to manipulate some of the game's less obvious mechanics to your advantage if you're observant. Overall, a good challenge, and a good way to blow off steam without devoting too much brain power, which is a welcome break from the thought-intensive sorts of games I usually play. Where I have to really give this game some praise is in the aesthetics. It adheres to an old school norse/druid/heavy metal aesthetic and has sprite work reminiscent of classic dark fantasy games. The experience is reminiscent of old school 3d shooters and will put a lot of people right into the nostalgia zone. I also have to give a special shout-out to the soundtrack. It's HYPE. Odds are, if you're a fan of the visual aesthetic, you'll also be a fan of the music, and vice-versa. Given how often you'll be restarting in this game, it's important to have a soundtrack that you WANT to listen to on repeat, and it fulfills that requirement phenomenally.

The graphics and music was pretty good, and I enjoyed shooting monsters with my Shillelagh thing pew pew https://youtu.be/2bay7OYDgjY

Great game if you're into classic FPS requiring fast reflexes and zero thought. You'll get obsessed with this game after a few minutes of playing. You'll love it, I promise.