The Shiro Games survival title comes to the Steam Early Acces
As for fun, one of the guaranteed success recipes is the survival cooperative. Get together with some friends and start an adventure in which we know that, yes or yes, they will crush us. The challenge is supposed to go further and further … but the real goal is to have a good laugh watching how we are overwhelmed, listening to the cries of our colleagues asking for help that we can not offer, to fall all annihilated, well twinned, before the Nth Horde of Zombies. Defeated, yes, but with a face of satisfaction and wanting to start a new game. This formula has been applied successfully since the beginning of the PC. Back in the 1980s, Atari created the genre with Gauntlet, an isometric cooperative whose foundations today are the present Darksburg. And it was carried to perfection in the deliveries of Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead II, of Valve, already in 2008 and 2009.
If we were able to make a pastiche between these two titles so distant, we would obtain a game like this Darksburg, from the French Shiro Games, which we present today.
As in the two aforementioned titles, Darksburg offers us four heroes, with very different abilities, inoperative on their own, but a machine to destroy enemies when combined. The objective of the four is as simple as survival, something not easy when in front we have infinite hordes of zombies.
The action takes place in an isometric environment, set in a medieval city, with overhead view and fixed camera, totally appropriate to the style of play.
The four characters are sufficiently well built, even with hardly any background that gives them personality beyond their design and excellent presentation videos. Thus, we will have three melee heroes and one of ranged attack, in which their possibilities are not obvious at all and require a game time to understand exactly what their role in combat is.
Soon we will realize that one of the heroes, a werewolf named Varag, will perform the tank duties, a bearded chef armed with a huge ladle, Runolf, will have the real goal of healing and empowering the rest. The warrior nun Abigail does not support as much damage as Varag but it is the one that has the most devastating zone attacks and its utility eliminating zombies is almost as much as Rose's, the remote heroine, very fragile, but with an attack that gains power while be free of attacks, so one of the goals of the rest is to keep it safe.
A simple synergy on paper, but very complex to carry out. Especially when the challenge is so great. The action is based on interspersing more or less quiet moments with others where the enemies are hundreds, overflowing with the heroes. That is when the use of their different special powers becomes decisive. The success of the mission will depend largely on when each hero launches his particular attacks. From the healing cauldron that Runolf throws and heals his companions, to the divine light beam of Abigail that sweeps every enemy that is within reach. The problem? These attacks require a recharge time and their use at the right time or does not condition survival against future hordes.
It is the hours of play that end up demonstrating how well these characters are raised and how essential their perfect coordination is. Of course anyone can withstand the first hordes and can even complete the challenges in the easy mode, even in the normal mode … but the game demands more and more coordination as we choose the difficult mode and a "nightmare" mode that really becomes in that even for the most tanned players.
To ensure that there are no stagnations and consequent boredom, the heroes level up as we play them, thus achieving improvements in their performance that allow us to face the most demanding levels more possibilities.
The game modes available are three. Survival, adventure and Versus. The first of the modes takes place in a small stage that will be coming successive hordes of enemies, increasingly complicated, with the aim of supporting a maximum of twenty. We must recognize that we do not know what happens if that last horde is overcome. In adventure mode, we must cross the city of Darksburg with the heroes and perform different tasks. It is usually about taking something at one point and taking it to another, with the difficulty that the hero who makes the transport is vulnerable and must be protected along the way.
At this point it should be noted that enemy zombies, called Revenants, have their own "heroes." Some zombies with special abilities when it comes to harming or incapacitating us. Their greatest danger is that they manage to separate us from the rest of the group and immobilize us. Either we are rescued, or it is certain death.
These zombie heroes make sense of the latest game mode, Versus. Emulating the now legendary Left 4 Dead, while 4 players take on the role of heroes, four others will control these special zombies. In this way we will have an adventure where the enemies are not controlled by the AI, but by other players, which increases the fun exponentially. Without doubt the funniest way …
The title is now available in "early access" on Steam for € 19.99 and is very well received. Entering a game is quite fast and if we choose to create it, we also receive players easily. While the game is still in development, it is totally stable and we haven't found a single bug.
On the negative side, we must mention the limited content that it still offers. Four heroes, three maps, three game modes … From Shiro Games it is guaranteed that this will be improved and they have already announced the incorporation of heroes and campaigns. Given the satisfactory nature of this early access, we await you with anxiety.
