Your castle is being invaded, but the invaders are missing your greatest hero: a one-man army, the ultimate living weapon.
THE GAME
Castle Of Alchemists is an action tower defense developed by Team Machiavelli, distributed by Catoptric Games and IndieArk. You take control of Bellator, a chemically enhanced super soldier equipped with many traps, who must protect the castle against enemy invasion, while everyone is trapped inside the fortress, thanks to his defense system.
With the help of blacksmiths and scientists, you'll improve your arsenal and your physical abilities, facing hordes and more enemy hordes from other dimensions that want to destroy your castle.
MY IMPRESSIONS
We have an interesting proposal here. A 2D action tower defense. It's something like Orcs Must Die!, only in pixel art. A very good idea, but one that may alienate players who expect a smoother learning curve. In the first phase, you already feel horrible. The common sense is that the level goes up so that you learn the basic mechanics of the game. In Castle Of Alchemists, he doesn't give you time for that. And I know that's really the point of the game: to be tough. So keep this question in mind.
The game is in Portuguese-Brazil and is currently in early access. Taking that into account, I imagine he has a lot to improve on many aspects, even if it takes time, as there are only two developers working on an entire game. This is commendable. The first thing that confuses is the commands. It is still not possible to remap the controls and this causes a lot of discomfort and miss clicks, which is very disruptive in a game where every resource is precious. Because it's a 2D game, many hit boxes are a bit weird and the projectiles aren't clear. These are things that improve the quality of life in the game and need to be reviewed.
As I said earlier, the learning curve of the levels is very bad. Even with the premise that the game is easy to learn and difficult to master, I don't think it's any fun to start with failure. Understand, the problem is not that it is difficult, the problem is that it does not have a decent learning curve.
The fact is that Castle Of Alchemists is a game that has enormous potential, with several builds, several ways to set up your traps, creative combos and everything else. It's just that, in my opinion, he needs to be nicer in the beginning, or he'll drive unsuspecting players away.
ACHIEVEMENTS
Most achievements are tied to combos and defeated enemies. Eventually, you'll get most of them just by playing a lot, as they are relatively high numbers of combos and their variations, as well as the types of enemies. If you want to grind these achievements, it will be a lot of work.
CONCLUSION
Tower defense is one of my favorite game genres and I love 2D games. Putting the two together, I can only have loved, right? Well, that was not the case here. I felt very uncomfortable playing, I forced myself to understand each mechanic and, even so, the game didn't shine in my eyes. I can see his full potential, but it's not for me. At least not in the state the game is in. And I have faith that, even at a slower pace, it will improve a lot.
The game will take you some time to understand each mechanic and you will be very frustrated with blows that you don't even know where they came from or throwing grenades that explode at the enemy's foot and nothing happens. Firearms seem useless and your warhammer will be your best friend.
I wish I had been excited about this game, but until there's control remapping and a better learning curve, it's boring. I will revisit the game in the future, because I see the developers' concern for their project and, for sure, we will see more hits than misses.
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