Developer: iFun4all
Publisher: iFun4all, Feardemic
Platforms: PC, Switch
Tested on: PC
Ritual: Crown of Horns – Review
Ritual: Crown of Horns is a classic arcade twin-stick shooter with masses of undead creatures coming at you. This seems like a great arcade shooter, but it turns out that the difficulty of the game is way too high. The moment you start the game, too many enemies will come at you while you need to defend one point from their attacks. With this many enemies, the game still tries to focus on precision over the running and gunning that’s normally done in this type of games.
Story
Ritual: Crown of Horns is set in an alternate universe in the western U.S. during the 18th century. In this game, you play as Daniel Goodchild, a bounty hunter. You embark on a patriotic mission to kill a witch, which seems to be a bit fishy. It appears to be a trap and you get overwhelmed by cultists. Sadly, you die rather quickly as it seems there is no escape. You will be revived by the witch afterwards. She will tell you it was a trap laid by the government that sent you. She strikes a deal with you to give you an opportunity for revenge if you give her your heart and soul. The witch is hunted by the Cult of the Horn, which has taken over most of society. These cultists gain their strength from souls while the witch’s rituals free these souls, that’s why they’re after her. The story progresses further after each completed mission with cutscenes showing the characters talking. The story is not really that interesting to follow, but it’s nice that there is actually a plot present in a game such as this.
Graphics
The graphics of this game are certainly not the best, but in this point of view, it’s not really necessary to have the most detailed graphics. In each level, the screen will soon be filled with many enemies that will take up most of the space on the screen. A lot of blood will be splattered on the ground which certainly fits the scene as you are killing a lot of enemies while defending the witch. The objects in each level are quite well-drawn but some fences could have been done better as you notice yourself bumping into those a lot.
Sound
The music in the title screen and while in the Bloody Heartlands, your base of operations is quite horror-like which could keep you tense all the time. A guitar is also used for combining a bit of a western-style with this horror-like setting. While in a level, the music intensifies the more crowded it gets. There’s no voice-acting in the game, only written sentences in conversations.
Gameplay
Ritual: Crown of Horns is a twin-stick survival shooter set in Western America of the 18th century in an alternate universe. Unfortunately, the game doesn’t really have functioning controller support, at least not a working one with our gamepad, so we had to use the mouse and keyboard for this game.
If you’re handy with the mouse, then aiming at enemies while walking around levels won’t be that big of a problem for you. The game tends to be very hard for those who aren’t quite that handy with this setup. The difficulty of the game is one of its biggest issues. There are so many enemies coming at you from all directions, which lets you feel it’s a lost cause when playing a level. It’s enough to survive for a specific amount of time in each level as when the witch’s ritual is complete, all enemies get destroyed, but surviving can prove to be very tough.
When you start a level, the witch will be inside a building of sorts with some barricades in front of each entrance. The cultists will come from all sides to try to reach her and damage her. As you are bonded with the witch, you’ll share your life with her. If she gets hurt, your life will drain as well. There are two types of cultists coming at you; those who target the witch and others who are specifically after you. These are mostly fast ones with a lot of damage output, so you need to be aware of them. The other cultists won’t harm you, so you can walk past them without getting hurt, but they’ll keep on destroying the barricades to reach the witch. Kill them as much and as fast as you can to withhold them as long as you can. When the witch’s spell timer runs out, she will activate her spell, and all the enemies will be wiped out in a blink of the eye, but until then, you’ll need to do the killing.
You’ll start with a pistol and a shotgun as your first two weapons. The pistol has six bullets while the shotgun only has two. The shotgun is quite slow to reload while the handgun is quite fast, but the handgun doesn’t do a lot of damage. In this game, instead of running and gunning, they tried to set the focus on aiming before you shoot, resulting in deadly criticals that one-shot enemies. The downside of this, is that it will take up a lot of time, making it impossible to keep up with the number of enemies. If you don’t aim before you fire, you’ll need several shots of your pistol to kill enemies while it only has six bullets, so you’ll be reloading a whole lot more than you would want to.
As you progress through the game, you’ll encounter old friends of the witch. When you’ve freed them, they will join you at the Bloody Heartlands, your safe zone. Here you can equip spells, purchase new gear that will get unlocked as you progress through the story, and upgrade your weapons. For purchasing these upgrades, you’ll need Demonic Horns, the currency in this game. These horns can be acquired by completing missions. It’s best to think before you buy as you can’t farm these by replaying a level.
Conclusion
Ritual: Crown of Horns is a very tough game. There’s only one difficulty in this game and this is definitely not easy to beat. Because of the enormous amount of enemies and the annoying reload times of weapons, it’s very hard to keep up with all these enemies. This makes the game too hard for its own good. The difficulty of this game tends to make you quit playing because it isn’t even fun anymore at some points. If you’re looking for a big challenge, this game could be perfect for you, but if you’re looking for a fun shooter that you can play laid-back on the couch, then this isn’t the right game for you.
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