Tesla Force is a rogue-lite, top down, twin stick shooter that ‘stars’ several famous historical figures fighting off enormous hordes of evil creatures. I didn’t realize this, but it’s actually based off of an earlier game by the same dev studio that was called Tesla Vs Lovecraft (2018). If you thought you would never see the likes of Nikola Tesla, Marie Curie, H.P. Lovecraft, and Mary Shelley teaming up to fight evil, 10tons makes us all think again. Playable characters based off of these four folks are exactly who you get to plays as (the latter two require unlocking, but still).
The game begins with a cutscene in London that sees Tesla inadvertently opening a rift to another dimension that spills out a seemingly endless amount of monsters. Marie Curie, a very accomplished and famous scientist in her own right, teams up with Tesla to fight back, using an assortment of traditional and fictional weapons, abilities, and perks. Levels are randomly generated across three main chapters/areas that you unlock as you play, with each area having about two dozen stages. Objectives include full elimination, territory control, item gathering, and surviving for a set period of time before your option to end the level is reached. These objectives or mission types rotate around, randomly. Each mission is typically very short, lasting well under ten minutes, sometimes even under three minutes. Should you die, though, you lose all temporary perks and must start the chapter over. Permanent perks can be earned along the way thankfully, making repeat trips more enjoyable.
As you battle, players pick up crystals and energy cells to use for purchasing weapons, weapon upgrades, abilities, and perks in between stages. You have some choice over what stage comes next usually, and you can tell what mission type and what reward a stage has before you select it. Various ‘challenges’ or milestones are on the menu as well, such as getting 125 crystals to unlock Mary Shelley, for example. A second player can join in at the ‘lobby’ area in between battles, and each character is a little bit different. Curie can’t pilot a mech, but she can dual wield some weapons and her health is about forty points lower than Tesla’s, for example. Player’s health and pickups are independent and not shared, which is an option I would have preferred to have for those times when you or your co-op buddies aren’t on the same skill level. Being able to share the goods with others would have made the experience more balanced and fun for the less skilled players, but I suppose it would have also made the game too easy.
As is, Tesla Force is pretty tough, but that comes with the genre. Even though the missions are short, they get difficult quick. Players can dodge around and that is essential, as you constantly have literal hordes of enemies chasing you down in varying speeds and sizes. Hives keep the enemies swarming and spawning in, but various pick ups like health and different weapons and those oh-so-important parts to Tesla’s mech appear routinely as well, you just have to fight your way over to them. When you have completed the objective for the stage you’re on, you can press Triangle to exit, or, you can keep fighting for a while should you desire to.
I played this game on both PS5 and PS4 Pro, and on the latter I had a lot of crashes. I actually ended up playing it more on PS4 Pro than the PS5 due to logistics this past week. Graphically, and in terms of performance, I couldn’t really tell a difference. This is by no means a graphical powerhouse and it doesn’t seem to benefit from next-gen in any obvious way, but obviously the crashing I had on PS4 Pro was strange. Perhaps it was just unique to my setup, though. Still, the presentation quality is not awesome; it gets the job done, but won’t leave you awed or in a hurry to show it off. It’s not too surprising the game weighs in at under 1GB. That said, I liked some of the music, the comicbook style cutscenes were pretty well done, and there is a nice use of a lot of colors in-game. However, colors are such that it can be hard to distinguish things on screen, such as your your character or some enemy types, due to all of the frenzy on screen.
Tesla Force is one of the few rogue-lite games I have ever played, and I also rarely play twin stick shooters. I found the experience a little chaffing at times, in how I had to restart a chapter of random stages after dying, but there is a lot of satisfaction derived from unlocking better and better weapons, abilities, and perks and laying waste to the monsters. Best played with a friend or three, Tesla Force is pretty cool and reasonably priced for the experience it offers overall.
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