Purgatory: War of the Damned – Preview
Purgatory: War of the Damned is an early access multiplayer FPS in which you take on the role of battle mage fighting with both magic spells and melee weapons. Although the current content is still very limited, the gameplay is original and manages to impress.
The game is solely focussed on multiplayer combat, so there is no story to speak of. Fighting is done by casting long-range spells and using your melee weapon in four game modes, with a fifth under construction. For now you can chose between duel, deathmatch and team deathmatch (which are pretty self-explanatory) and Archmage, in which one random player out of four plays as the archmage: a more powerful version of the regular battle mage. Launching the game brings you straight to the character customization screen in which you can buy new spells, items and weapons with soul fragments earned by playing games and check up on your character’s stats. One click away you can find the online matchmaking tab which is mostly empty for now. In the next tab you can make your own match and chose to fill it with bots which can be pretty challenging. The options are bare minimum in this stage of development, with sliders for audio and mouse settings, resolution settings and non-rebindable controls.
Except for some background music in the main menu, there is no audio except for some grunts of pain and the casting of your spells. Purgatory: War of the Damned actually looks surprisingly good, which shouldn’t come as a surprise since it’s made in the Unity engine. There appears to be only one character model though, and the maps are reasonably big but there are only four of them for now. Although another case of bare minimum content, they do look the part with lava and ruins setting the mood just right and a sped up day/night cycle keeping things interesting. Spread throughout the maps are a first implementation of traps implemented with more to come. For now this is limited to instance sharp spikes on walls to knock other players into. During a match you can pick up randomly spawned spells with limited use to fill up your four spell slots. These range from a rail-gun style arc of lightning to a homing phoenix or even an exploding carrot. If you already have your four slots filled up, it is possible to change out spells with E, but some caution is advised because you can exchange your default spell (which has unlimited uses) for another limited use spell, so it’s possible to get stuck with no ranged attacks remaining. Rounding up the HUD are the health bar which does not regenerate unless you have unlocked the right spells, and regenerating stamina used for sprinting. Spells colliding in the air and dealing splash damage makes for a whole different experience from your run-of-the-mill modern military first person shooter. Instead of carefully shooting from cover, conserving ammo and what not, you’ll be frantically dodging and running around to get a clear line of sight to your enemy.
The early access usually comes with some bugs, and Purgatory: War of the Damned is certainly no exception. The hitboxes are too big, your melee weapon is annoyingly big, taking up most of the screen, sometimes a picked up spell doesn’t do anything at all. On top of that, the menu and scoreboard have some alignment issues and overall unfinished feel, but with that being said, most of these are relatively unobtrusive and not game-breaking. The main issue is the lack of playerbase, don’t count on actually finding a lobby to play against strangers.
Conclusion
While still very rough around the edges, the potential is definitely there. With some polishing and additional content Purgatory: War of the Damned can easily grow into a great game. If you can embrace the minor but for now frequent bugs, playing with bots is quite enjoyable and at times challenging. Furthermore, it looks relatively great, and runs well, with low listed minimal system requirements. In it’s current state though, the game seems to be still very early access with little content and player base. Whether or not it will live up to its potential, only time will tell.
Purgatory: War of the Damned - Preview,
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