There’s nothing like sitting down to a nice roguelike adventure where getting defeated only means you’re going to get better. I wish life were like that. Maybe it is. I don’t know. It’s not that type of review.
Anyway, Storm Lancers from developer and publisher ProbablyMonsters is a roguelike 2D platformer that contains some fun monsters, quick and easy controls, and some good bosses that aren’t too difficult to figure out. While the variety of the content can get a bit repetitive here and there, once you get going with the game, you’ll want to keep it going. That’s always a solid sign of a good time.
So, sharpen your sword, make sure to save some dough for rogue chests, and let’s get stabbing at this review.
How it starts
Storm Lancers throws players into the role of a Storm Lancer, someone blessed with powers from a mysterious glowing creature, and who returns to life upon death. The Storm Lancer’s purpose is to cleanse the land of evil hordes and continue to get better as they progress with every death faced. And that death part is important because players are destined to die a lot in this game. We will get to that last part in a bit. Let’s talk about the first steps.
At the beginning of the experience, the player will go into the adventure about as weak and barbones as they can get. The game will throw out random weapons at the get-go, where a player can choose a primary and a secondary. The weapons come in a variety of flavors: swords, guns, hammers, axes, and quick knives. While the knives/swords/hammers/axes are all built for the primary, guns are left to their own accord in the secondary slots. Each weapon comes with certain stats, such as accuracy/power/etc, which make it easy to jump into this portion of the game. Those stats can be improved by finding new weapons lying in treasure chests scattered across maps.
To open those chests, players must take down enemies, who will drop coins. If the player collects enough coins, they can open these chests. The chests come in a variety of prices and purposes. Some chests will contain weapon upgrades, meaning the stats might be better than what the player has in the weapon slots. Some chests are there to improve character stats, such as health. Regardless, the higher the cost for chests, the better material is picked up from within them. This leads to the first dilemma in the game: should a player tough it through killing a large number of enemies and collecting a lot of coins, or should they start small and build their way up? The answer is the former.
Progressing in Storm Lancers and getting over the initial hump that the game creates for players at the beginning of the experience requires patience and a slow build. Jumping right into every battle without thinking about it first only means the game is going to be short-lived and drive one crazy. Slow and steady wins the race with this game, and a slow building of coins means that life is going to be easier later on. By defeating more enemies and opening up more chests, the player will get to try out new weapons and slowly understand what is worth it and what is not. And trust me, there are a lot of lame chests in the game that are low cost.
Collecting 15-30k of coins during the first three maps of the game will mean that the player is going to get some good stuff. That good stuff could mean a better sword or maybe even a secondary that is packed with poison of fire capabilities. The more expensive the chest, the more powerful the item that lies within it. So, it’s much better to keep killing and collecting to get a more powerful, stat-boosted weapon. While some weapons are clearly more powerful than others, the player has the best chance at getting something useful if they keep killing common enemies and do not spend coins on smaller chests. It’s an easy formula that makes the smaller chests feel like a waste of coins.
Now, opening chests to get better weapons is just the beginning of this strategic adventure, as better stats will certainly mean more fallen enemies. But! Instead of focusing on coins, the real item that needs to be collected is small blue orbs that are held by bosses and king/alpha common enemies (there is a small crown icon above them to indicate they have these orbs). The orbs can be used for the only retained collectible during the battle, which means that if a player dies, then they will only lose their coins and not these orbs. Yeah, collecting coins and losing them during an intense battle can be such a demeaning feeling, but this is a roguelike. It doesn’t care about your feelings or loss. True story.
Anyway, once players collect a set number of orbs, they can use them to purchase permanent upgrades that appear at the beginning of the level. For example, there is a permanent upgrade in the game that allows the Storm Lancer to be revived once during battle, should they fall. It’s a high-priced orb upgrade, but it stays with the player during every re-try in the game. Orbs can also open up new weapons, more health, and a bevy of other upgrades for the player. Having these upgrades helps with the entertainment value of the game and instills a solid motivational feeling to keep playing the game, especially when faced with so much repetition.
Department of repetition department
The repetition in the game is with maps and enemies. Players will feel that when they get to about their fifth or sixth death. They will see the same maps with the same enemies, and with pretty much the same positioning, and will learn more about enemy positions because of it. Heck, the repetition helps build a strategy on how to approach fights and survive the longest. With that positive, the repetition can be such a turn-off as well.
I had hoped that Storm Lancers might randomize maps or enemies with each death, in the same vein as Hades, but that’s not the case. For example, I know that during the first level, I will run into an area that contains a high-value chest, and it will be guarded by two wolf-like enemies. I can guarantee that nearly every playthrough. Once in a while, one of those enemies might have a crown on its head, indicating an orb, but it will always be there. There isn’t much variety with enemies and placement. There is a lot of repetition.
I didn’t fully feel this until about the third hour of playing, but I knew it was there the entire time. If ProbablyMonsters could have changed it up each time the player dies and thrown in some randomness that at least stretched the repetition out a little, I think it would have been a more entertaining experience. Maybe that can happen with an update down the road. Who knows? Anyway, this is not a dealbreaker by any means, as the game is still entertaining as hell. At the very least, it covers it mostly up with weapon and character upgrades. Oh, and the bosses are also interesting, which helps slow the repetition a bit.
Bosses and their maps
The bosses in Storm Lancers are beautifully complicated in their moves and how they approach the fight. Each boss will have their own set of moves catered to the level players are traversing. For example, the first map is driven by wolf-like creatures, dangerous hornets, and slow-moving turtles that spit poison. All of them reside in a desert wasteland. The boss is a larger version of those wolves, with a scorpion-like tail, and will pop up from the ground to attack, as well as charge at the player, while occasionally spitting poison. They are related to the map’s theme and to the common creatures that reside on it. It’s clever and creative, as well as well-designed and thought-through.
The game takes on this same boss design schematic with the second map, which is filled full of machinery and deadly robots. At the end of it all, players get to face a flame and bomb spitting, transporting robot that is devastating when one gets in the wrong position during the fight. That giant robot matches the level and enemies it exists with, which, again, proves the thought and design process was on point.
Now, having sung that praise, the bosses also contain patterns that are easy to pick up on. The catch? Well, if players don’t catch onto the patterns quickly, then they stand to die and repeat the journey that led them to that boss. What this pokes at negatively is how much patience a player has, especially if they get a good roll of weapons during their previous time and not a good roll the next go around. That changes the frustration factor of the game and will give players a second thought about whether they are invested in it enough to try again to progress further and get beyond the boss that took them down.
BUT! That’s a roguelike attitude the game has. That genre wants players to learn from their mistakes and do it again. The bosses are good motivation to go through the same maps again, if not only to see what the map beyond said boss looks like. Good or bad, it’s the nature of the genre. Personally, I didn’t have a problem with repeating the journey and obstacles over again to take down a boss that I have their fight pattern down. Heck, if anything, it allowed me to cash in orbs, unlock new weapons, and see if I could fight enemies better. It was also cool to see randomized weapon drops in the chests, which was a nice motivation as well.
More motivation to keep going
While weapons are fun, orb upgrades are a blast, and boss fights are what players live for in the game, it’s all helped by good controls. This is potentially the best part of Storm Lancers and a helpful reason to keep going and going.
Moving around during the game and during intense fights is driven by weapons, sliding, and attribute powers gained by successful and progressive runs. Starting with the simple pieces, when going up against an enemy, the Storm Lancer can charge in, slide (LB) past an enemy, then proceed to attack. The slide, run, and jump aspects of the mechanics are easy-breezy. Players will not have to give controls a thought when playing the game. The developers have made it such a non-factor because of how smooth they feel when approaching a strategy to get through enemies.
I loved the controls in this game. I felt like they were the best design that made repeating the journey more than bearable. The controls get even more complicated and better as the player progresses to new maps and takes down new bosses. The player will earn new character attributes, such as a double-jump or using a hook to navigate areas, that will just compound more entertainment on the control side of this game.
Anyway, long story short, the controls make this game fun. They needed to be mentioned.
On that sweet note, let’s wrap up this review.
Conclusion
Storm Lancers from developer and publisher ProbablyMonsters is a wonderful roguelike adventure that is driven by fun controls, solid action, and interesting bosses. While it’s going to bring some frustration and repetition, it’s still a solid experience.
