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| Forced Showdown by Mischief Maker 11/20/2016, 8:17pm PST | ||||
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| This game asks the simple question, what if you took the action RPG dopamine rush of leveling up but removed the hours and hours of mind-numbing grind to get to it?
Forced Showdown is like a cross between Smash TV, Torchlight 2, Crimsonlands, and just a dash of Magic: The Gathering. The premise is you're a weirdo on a life-or-death future gameshow. The basic flow of the game is fighting your way up the ladder to take on the big boss of your chosen difficulty level. Each rung on the ladder is a chain of 7 rooms populated by a random assortment of enemies until you battle a mid-boss in the 8th room. Each room plays out as a mouse-WASD isometric shooter, but moving at the more languid pace of an ARPG than a hectic Robotron clone. The hook of Forced Showdown is between each room you're presented with a random hand of cards that can give you items and powerups with a mana cost corresponding to the power of the card. You get 1 mana the first room, 2 mana the second, and so on. You don't keep unspent mana. The game lets you create custom decks and like Magic there's a need to balance cheap cards you can play in early rounds with super cards for later on. After you defeat the midboss on your rung, all the cards you accumulated are taken away (but you pick up one permanent buff), then start the whole process over again on the next rung. On higher difficulties the mid bosses get their own cards. The result is mainlining ARPG positive reinforcement of hitting the levelup ding then choosing between skill choices at a breakneck pace as you craft a super character build one rung then just as quickly respec into something different the next round, and so on. It's a weird experiment and I'd say it's a success. |
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Forced Showdown by 11/20/2016, 8:17pm PST  Are the unlocked characters meant to be a bigger challenge? by 12/25/2016, 7:14am PST Really? I'm worst at the Sun character. Too slow when firing. by 12/25/2016, 7:37am PST |
