Developer: PigeonDev
Publisher: Sometimes You
Platform: PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S
Tested on: PS5
Hero Survival – Review
Vampire Survivors basically put the auto-battler survival genre on the map. The overnight success of the game also spawned many clones, such as Nordic Ashes or Remedium: Sentinels, with some being significantly better than others. Even so, it seems that this type of game is now booming, and a lot of developers are trying their hand at developing their own unique spin on the genre. In comes PigeonDev with their unique idea where you’ll be limited to four guns that float around you to deal with your enemies. We put the game to the test, and we were sadly rather disappointed.
Story
Even though the team behind the game tried to implement a story here, it’s beyond vague, and it’s somewhat limited to a few lines of nonsensical text. It also doesn’t help that Hero Survival fails to pick a theme to stick with, as all levels feel very random, and even the characters don’t have a backstory or anything. It would have been better to create a coherent whole or to skip the story altogether.
Graphics
Graphically, Hero Survival is not much to look at. The pixel art is decent, and the character designs aren’t too bad, but the game only has around six different enemy types, which are reused in every single one of the four available maps. The maps themselves don’t fare any better, as they look bland and as if they cost about two minutes of work in a program such as RPG Maker. We can appreciate simple art and pixel art as a whole. Each of the arenas has its own distinct theme with some random clutter being shown on the map, but every single piece of decoration (tombstones, trees, and so on) you simply clip through. These items serve no purpose, and you actually start wondering why they are there in the first place. That being said, credit should be given where credit is due, as the character designs themselves weren’t too bad. Sadly, as stated above, there is no rhyme or reason in terms of a general theme.
Sound
If you look up bland and uninspired in the dictionary, you’ll probably see a picture of Hero Survival. The music is extremely generic and actually doesn’t fit what is happening onscreen. It also constantly loops and the developers didn’t even bother implementing music transitions, making it so that you’ll sometimes just play the game in silence for a few seconds. The sound effects of the gun are amusing for the first few minutes, but after a while, these just give you a massive headache. You can alter the volume setting in the main menu, but not during the actual gameplay.
Gameplay
Hero Survival is an auto-battler survival game in the same vein as Vampire Survivors or Nordic Ashes. You’ll play through fairly short time-based battles, gaining experience, acquiring new guns, and possibly leveling up your skills and passive stats. Sadly, outside of the shtick with the guns, it’s already clear that this game is generic shovelware. We did quite enjoy the idea of the floating guns around us, and it did entertain us for a while, but it didn’t take long before Hero Survival’s flaws started showing up.
After selecting your character and your starting weapon, you pick an arena and you basically start blasting enemies. At the start of the game, you’ll only have one character, one gun, and one arena you can select. After acquiring enough funds, you can unlock more, but the game will never remember your preference, and you’ll have to go through the very clunky menu every single time you play the game. During the actual battles, you’ll have to go through ten waves of enemies, with a timer that gets longer each round and spawn rates that start to increase as well. At the end of each wave, you’ll get to choose between four weapons or items. If you don’t like them, you can reroll the equipment on offer, but you can only do this once without having to hand out your hard-earned in-game cash.
Even though you will acquire weapons to put into one of the four weapon slots, you don’t really get that much stronger. Weapons are offered at random, and you’ll never be able to actually upgrade them. If you get a better weapon on offer in between waves, and your four slots are full, you’ll just have to replace one of your weapons. Other items you can pick at the end of a wave almost always have a negative trait as well. This makes it so you never actually feel stronger as your run progresses. Even as you progress through the game, and you unlock new characters, you’ll never feel powerful, as the base stats of all characters are nearly identical. There is a bit of variety when it comes to HP, Armor, and Greed, but that’s about it. Greed influences how much money you’ll get when picking up coins during battles, but even when you go for Greed upgrades, it barely adds extra cash on pick-ups.
Another issue lies with the actual level-ups. As you gain more experience, you’ll always get offered the same three starting choices in terms of what ‘class’ you’re going to build, and not even new characters will change things up. At every level, you’ll gain a bit of extra HP, but this actually doesn’t get healed as you level up. We can understand damage not getting healed, but the additional HP you get by leveling up not being healed is ridiculous. The game also doesn’t have regular health drops when you kill enemies, you’ll just have to be lucky to get it offered to you as a level-up bonus. This also means that you’ll have to miss out on a possible skill upgrade for your class if you want to heal. Outside of the class upgrades, you’ll also get offered other level-up bonuses, but these only stay until your next level-up. This, once again, makes everything feel a bit pointless, as you don’t really get stronger. If you keep choosing the class upgrades, you’ll probably have higher chances to actually complete your run(s).
The sad part is, even though this is one of the most basic games we’ve seen in recent times, it’s not even bug-free or decently programmed. The hitboxes are all over the place, which often results in unfair damage, and the game also doesn’t have a ‘grace period’. This means that when you take damage, you’ll keep taking damage without gaining a tiny moment of invulnerability. To make matters even worse, you’ll be body-blocked by your enemies, and this typically results in a game over when you get swarmed. A great run can get destroyed by awkward spawning rates. In the third level, we frequently had shotguns failing on us, where they would not fire at all anymore. Also, it’s best to stick with machine guns in the game, as a bazooka can completely destroy your run as well. The game is programmed in such a way that if you kill a huge horde of monsters in one hit, they will all respawn at the same time on the map, often causing you to get completely swarmed. Again, this is a sign of poor game design.
Conclusion
Hero Survival did have a few fun moments, but it all starts going wrong at its core. While the gameplay with actual guns, rather than spells, did provide a fun and original spin on the genre, it turned out to be a poorly programmed and bland mess. The game offers little to no variation, there is no coherent theme, the graphics are bland, the sound design is horrid, and there is not that much to look forward to in terms of progression. If you have five bucks to spare, simply pick up Vampire Survivors or Nordic Ashes instead.
Related Items
1 Comment
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
[…] there. There are quite a few interesting Survivors games out there, but also very crummy ones like Hero Survival, a title we reviewed a while ago. The subject of today’s review is also a Survivors title, […]