“Welcome. Dungeoneer, to the Castle of Confusion”
Knapsack at the ready? Helmet of Justice polished? Ready to Side-step left? Fortunately none of these are required, and there’s not a blue screen in sight. If like me you grew up watching classic TV programmes like Knightmare and the anomalous cartoon series Dungeons & Dragons, you probably also loved playing those early RPG games, Heroes of the Lance, Bards Tale and Dungeon Master. HoL – Heroes of Loot – from Orange Pixel/Abstraction Games sort of captures that mood. Let me explain…
Possibly because of its graphic style and sounds, or due to the fact we’re assaulting a randomly laid out dungeon floor, I can’t help feel drawn back to how I felt playing the classics on my Amiga. HoL somehow replicates the same feel even if it does it in a completely different way.
What ticks all the boxes for me is the random generation of every dungeon level in every playthrough, and the gorgeous pixel art. Heroes of Loot on the Vita wasn’t my first experience of the game, oh no. I’ve been a fan of Orange Pixel’s work since I discovered their games on Android. Yes that thing most of us have glued in our hands on a daily basis.
Orange Pixel have turned out some brilliant NON-IAP games on that format, and it’s a crying shame that HoL is only the second one to appear on the Vita (Gunslugs anyone?) What with Gunslugs 2, Space Grunts and the Spelunky-crushing Meganoid 2, lets cross everything in the hopes they might come to Vita in the near future!
Anyway back to our trouser-tightening dungeon romp. Your first playthrough will not only see you level up your chosen genre classic character class (Warrior, Elf, Wizard, Valkyrie) but also increase the difficulty of the dungeon. Whereas your character level resets with each play, the dungeon does not and will remain at whatever it got to on your best run. Levelling your character is a straightforward affair; just kill as many of the denizens that inhabit each floor and you will see clouds of blue XP orbs buzzing around your character [PRO TIP – when safe, stand still to allow them time to be absorbed]. Combat has been tweaked slightly from its original touch-only incarnation. We now have buttons and sticks! Any face button will attack, or you can choose to use the right stick to turn the game into a twin-stick shooter. [PRO TIP – Use the right stick when fighting in an open space, but use your face button of choice when fighting IN corridors, INTO corridors and FROM corridors. Auto targeting, you see.]
BY northlander
review - ps vita
60