Wild West. A lone bounty hunter tears up another announcement of a reward for another scoundrel, takes out his trusty Colt and goes after his soul to deliver him to the city, alive or dead, and receive the reward. Along the way, he saves a girl working in a saloon from bandits, stumbles upon a mine where slaves mine gold… What associations immediately arise in his head?? Spaghetti Westerns with Clint Eastwood (Clint Eastwood), something like "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly"? That’s right, but the main character in this video game production is… an ant.
Westworld
We saw anthropomorphic bears, wolves, bunnies, dogs and cats more than once. But I’ve had no luck with ants so far. The developers from Doublequote Studio, and they approached this not with giggles and giggles, but with the most serious expression on their faces. Plot in Blood will be Spilled built according to all the laws of spaghetti westerns. The main character is an ant named Jack, a moderately gloomy, stern and mysterious bounty hunter who clearly has skeletons in his closet.
Seeing him, the enemies shout with somewhat ironic surprise: “Jack? You’re alive? The grave has rejected you again? Came to take revenge? But it’s your own fault, if you were smarter, you’d be swimming in gold right now!“What happened between them, what to take revenge for, what is it my fault?”? At first nothing is known. No, it’s roughly clear what we’re usually talking about in such cases, but the intrigue still remains – and only as the story develops do we learn more and more details.
Having caught another criminal with a bounty on his head, our Jack must decide whether to kill him or spare him, sending him alive to the local prison. In the latter case, the local undertaker (naturally, also an ant) will sigh with regret: they say, he has already prepared a grave for this bastard Sullivan, so now she should disappear or something? To which our Jack calmly, flashing his faceted eyes from under his hat, replies: “The comfort of the undertakers is not my concern.”!»
In general, a spaghetti western https://casushicasino.co.uk/ from Blood will be Spilled it turned out to be quite serious, according to all the canons of the genre. Although, naturally, when it is played by ants with so many arms and legs, each of which can contain a Colt; when the saloon girls call the hostess a queen; or when you see that the soldiers in the fort live in honeycombs, then you still can’t help but smile.
Ants can jump..
The gameplay itself is all serious – it’s a mixture of action, platforming and turn-based battles. The platform part is more than standard. We run from left to right and vice versa, somewhere we jump at a low pace to get to the desired object, somewhere we press levers, somewhere we move boxes or trolleys to get to the right place. Or to get to a chest with a useful item – a healing potion or, for example, dynamite.
But there are also invigorating episodes when, for example, we have to run away from a huge spider, jumping over a web as we go, or when we run, jump and slide in open rough terrain, trying not to get into the sight of a sniper perched somewhere on a tower. In some situations (for example, in an old mine) the platforms under our feet literally fall apart in a matter of seconds – also very invigorating, especially considering the fact that there are sharp stakes under them.
…And shoot
However, the main dish in this western is turn-based battles. No, I’m not in the mood XCOM or Jagged Alliance, and closer to Worms, although this is not entirely true. When the battle begins, we are given two action points – one can be spent on moving, the second on shooting, reloading or using special skills. In addition, special abilities still require blood energy – Jack either collects it from the bodies of the dead (if they have just died), or personally sucks it out if he is very close to the enemy.
In fights, the main thing is to constantly move: shelters are short-lived and fall apart after a certain number of hits. And a lot depends on explosives – enemies, even if they are not ants, but some kind of insects, love to run around with dynamite and throw checkers. And there are also a lot of explosive red barrels – you yourself understand that a well-timed shot at all this explosive equipment can seriously change the balance of power.
You can also shoot at lamps and barrels of oil (the effects are obvious) or knock down stalactites – when they fall, they kill enemies outright. Sometimes they let you shoot from a cannon or machine gun. The only pity is that this is rarely allowed to be done in battles with bosses – but here they are really tenacious and have their own tactics.
Role-playing elements are in place. At the very beginning you need to choose one of three classes. The “good” one can shoot so that the bullets ricochet off the walls; the “bad” one uses dishonest tactics and throws daggers, immobilizing enemies; The “evil” one specializes in explosives and guns. By winning and completing missions, we earn not only money to buy more powerful revolvers, but also special stars, for which we improve existing ones and discover new abilities for each of the three classes.
Great sound (Jack’s voice was especially good), hand-drawn screensavers and generally a very decent picture – all this only adds points to the bank Blood will be Spilled. And everything would be fine, but there are simply a huge number of bugs – no, not bugs, but various errors like enemies remaining standing after death, freezing dialogues, broken scripts, and so on. More than once or twice I had to reboot just because something broke in the game once again. On the other hand, I wanted to play through it again and again – the game still captivates me with a half-crazy, but quite edible mixture of a typical spaghetti western and ants, as if they had escaped from the filming of another "Luntika". So we either wait for the patch, or we cry, inject ourselves, but eat this spaghetti..
Pros: there is intrigue in the plot; the atmosphere of a spaghetti western is well conveyed; mysterious main character; overall fun gameplay; interesting turn-based battles; beautiful picture and stylish comic videos; well-chosen music and expressive acting by voice actors.