I was able to play a preview of Bloodroots on the PC via Steam, and I want to give my impressions of the short demo. Developed by Paper Cult, the game reminds me a lot of the Kill Bill movies both in story and action. The story follows Mr. Wolf, a man left for dead in the wilderness. He is out for revenge, and whoever stands in his way will meet bloody and gory deaths.
In Bloodroots, the world is your oyster…for weapons. Basically, Mr. Wolf has three actions besides the basic moving around that you can do: attack (i.e., punch), jump, and pick up items. While you can pretty much clear the level with just Mr. Wolf’s punches (Trust me, Mr. Wolf is One Punch Man kind of killer.), you are given the whole environment to kill. See that wheelbarrow with hay? You can let Mr. Wolf ride it to smash an enemy into roadkill. Oh, the wheelbarrow broke? Use one of the wheels to fling around and decapitate an enemy’s (or two) head.
Utilizing this open-weapon type of environment, Paper Cult really takes the tempo of Bloodroots as a fast action game. It’s perfect to know that it only takes one attack to kill an enemy, no matter how bulky or scrawny he is. It’s also fair to know that it takes only one hit for Mr. Wolf to die. Yes, you don’t have a health bar or lives in this game; it’s kill or be killed. Luckily, there’s plenty of save points in the level, so that if you screw up, you will not have to start from scratch.
The cool part about the save points is that I was able to plan my attacks after some trial and many errors. It’s almost like directing a movie: First, let’s throw this flowerpot to knock out that enemy. Okay, now run to that barrel, jump on it and roll over those two enemies in the corner. Finally, let’s pick up one of these fishes from the broken barrel to smack those three enemies up ahead. Maybe in the next playthrough, I’ll just lug around that sword to decimate all of them.
In actually found myself playing the only level I was given plenty of times. I can already see Bloodroots as a game that has a high replayable value. It also has a challenge mode where you are given a certain task to complete, and these challenges refresh weekly, with high scorers placed on the leaderboard. Expect Bloodroots to come out to the PC (via Steam), PS4, and Nintendo Switch in a few months. If you want to play the demo, you can check out its website, subscribe to its mailing list, and you will be given a key by email to play.
This preview is based on an Early Access version of the game provided by the publisher.
