Blood Alloy: Reborn is a retro 2D Platformer with Metroidvania style gameplay by Boston based indie studio Suppressive Fire Games. You play as Nia, a cyborg in a dystopian Sci-Fi environment in which you must defeat wave after wave of mechanical enemies across a variety of maps and using an arsenal of various weapons.
The game starts you off with a tutorial giving you a basic rundown of the controls, something typical for this type of game that employs various mechanics. During this tutorial however it soon became clear that there was a glaring issue with this game from a gameplay perspective, and that is that the camera is not particularly quick or responsive to the movement of your player or the mouse when aiming. This first became apparent when jumping from platform to platform in the tutorial level and falling several times for not being able to see where I was meant to be jumping to, and then also when the actual game began. In the game waves of enemies appear throughout, and you are required to move around the map at a fast pace. However, with the camera as it currently is it becomes impossible to see enemies you may very well be running towards, making the likelihood of losing health all the more.
The actual controls such as the weapon use, jump and gliding abilities all worked fine and were responsive despite the poor camera. I also liked the map and enemy design and thought it was very in keeping with the world that they were trying to create with their game. There was a good attention to detail in making a map that not only could be traversable but also in keeping aesthetically with the dystopian vibe of the game. The sprite animation also was good and did remind me of older NES and SNES titles of this style. My highest praise though does go to the game’s music which is in keeping stylistically with what Blood Alloy is trying to convey whilst also being incredibly catchy and enjoyable with its synth driven rhythm and techno-esque beats.
Unfortunately though this was not enough to keep my interest, and I did find that twenty minutes through the game I had exhausted what Blood Alloy: Reborn had to offer me. The act of killing the enemies that do appear on the screen, despite varying in strength and ability, did soon become repetitive. I also found the game to be somewhat aimless, with no sense of narrative to drive the game or feeling of incentive to best any high scores I achieved. There are smaller achievements to unlock such as not shooting your gun for two minutes and making your character stay in mid air for 3 seconds, but I felt very little incentive to complete these.
Overall I feel this game did hold promise and had the potential to be an interesting title, unfortunately due to its repetitive nature and faulty camera it is holding itself back, and since my initial play I have found very little reason to return to the game. I feel more time should have been spent on making this title more unique in a genre that right now is very popular and has definitely made a resurgence. It is a shame to say that the best thing I have taken from this game is its enjoyable music, but unfortunately from a player perspective I was felt somewhat disappointed that the game had nothing new to offer the genre or even provide me with a fun playing experience.
For this reason I would rate this game as 3.5/10, for the missed opportunity that was there.
You can find out more about the game and Suppressive Fire Games at the games steam page and their website, http://www.bloodalloy.com/
James Burch