Upcoming hack-and-slash RPG BloodRoots is all about its verbs: “smash, slice, crush, blast, crack, slam, burst, break, split, slit, gut, tear, gash, gouge, scoop, cut, chop, dice, hash, grind,” it promises.
BloodRoots premiered yesterday at Nintendo’s indie games GDC event in San Francisco, where I met Raphael Toulouse, co-founder of developer Paper Cult, who explained that his game’s main selling point isn’t simply its Samurai Jack backgrounds or its fast-paced action.
It’s “object exploration,” a phrase that’s hard to understand until you’re pulling a wheel off a carriage and spinning and riding it into a gang of enemies or fighting an incoming dagger man with a carrot.
Toulouse compared BloodRoots’ protagonist, the revenge-seeking Mr. Wolf, to the many action heroes that Jackie Chan has played, because he’s “a complex person who uses everything around him as a weapon.” Ladders, dead fish, haystacks, haystacks on fire, and repurposed fence wood are all improvisation material. In the course of a few seconds, the player might pull an ax out of a stump, chop someone down with it, toss it aside to pick up a ladder, spin that around furiously in an area-of-effect attack and, after tossing that aside, grab a table and cut down whoever remains.
I only played for a brief period but found BloodRoots’ object-based combat fresh and surprising. Everything happens so fast. In a split second, if you misjudge a weapons’ range in relation to enemies’ trajectory toward you, that will mean starting the level over. It’s a little unforgiving, but so far, didn’t feel overly frustrating.
BloodRoots will be out on the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and Steam this summer.
Comments
One response to “BloodRoots Lets Players Fight With (Almost) Everything In Sight”
Not gonna talk at all about how like incredbly hotline miami this game is? The pick up anything and kill someone with it tactical top down game
The influences are pretty clear
pacing looks a bit manic.. good luck tracking multiple characters actions