Blazing Beaks. The birds strike back

Let’s talk about Blazing Beaks – a roguelike that made us forget about other games for more than 100 hours

What exactly is 100 hours of gameplay? Is it a lot? For example, a perfect completion of the Pillars of Eternity world will take you 100 hours. According to Skyrim, it is written that the complete passage of the plot and side quests will take about 300 hours. But what is 100 hours for a game tentatively created on the lap? I don’t mean literally, but with a game engine available for literally anyone to learn?

What does this game resemble? First of all, Enter the Gungeon. A lot of weapons, a shop, various bosses, a lot of opponents, procedurally generated levels – all this makes the game exciting and replayable, but let’s deal with everything in order.

Game process

Blazing Beaks is, first of all, a roguelike (rogue-like), that is, a game in which many things have a large dose of randomness. Each new passage will be completely different from the old one, so it is impossible to get used to the game with the destruction of the same opponents and memorizing combinations, which means that each new passage will be unique for you. And yet there is an opportunity to re-pass the level – after death or during the gameplay (if you go to the menu) you can see a set of numbers – this is the ID (probably the session ID), choosing which one in the main menu, you can re-visit the same locations with the same set of rooms and artifacts.

Despite the recorded 122 hours (that’s how much it took to knock out all the eyes), the game didn’t have time to get bored, and you don’t play it with thoughts of “pancakes when it’s over.” And the game may end…never, because even with a full playthrough there are two options – to finish the game or to continue with an increased level of difficulty (a kind of NG+, the game even has achievements for repeated playthroughs).

The game can be completed in 15-20 minutes, which means that gaming sessions rarely last longer than an hour (don’t worry, you’ll be killed before the hour is up).

All that is required of us during 5 game levels is to destroy opponents, pick up artifacts, collect items, change weapons and…try not to die. You will probably have a lot of problems with the latter. When I watched let’s play the other day, few players even reached the third level, and you should forget about the complete passage at all. What caused this? Complexity!

Complexity

There are three difficulties in the game . But they are very conditional, because in the first place the number of HP of monsters increases. And no, the monsters that don’t run here are fools, but are quite capable of bypassing an obstacle, finding you in a secluded corner and killing you at the first opportunity. A couple of factors should be taken into account here – the speed of your character is not always higher than that of the enemies, the speed of the weapon is also far from always what you wanted and which is needed to destroy the approaching opponents, it will not always be possible to escape from the enemy’s shot, due to the presence of many obstacles (not always destroyed) in the levels, and do not forget about acid puddles, traps, bombs, and also just the factor that while you are thinking how to kill one opponent, the other can aim at you or run up from behind and deal you damage.

Despite the lack of friendly fire (shooting at one’s own), the game in cooperative does not become easier here, but rather the opposite. This is how the game vaguely resembles Rampage Knights, where half of the deaths were due to the presence of another player and their actions during the game (thrown off a cliff, pushed into a trap, blown up with a bomb, etc.).

The main reason for the increased complexity and most of the problems during the gameplay are artifacts.

Artifacts

Artifacts here don’t mean anything good that helps gameplay. On the contrary, they harm him in all possible ways. For example, there is an artifact, when you pick it up, any enemy can literally kill you in one touch. There are those that reduce the speed of firing, reloading, and running. There are those that disable your additional capabilities. The ones that take all or part of the money if the enemy is not killed by you (and this will almost always be the case, because the enemies have friendly fire, and the effect of acid, bombs and traps also applies to opponents).

And it would be nothing, and it would be possible not to pick up these same artifacts, but here it is worth mentioning such a concept as human greed. The fact is that there are shops in the game where you can exchange these same artifacts for useful items that will improve your characteristics or increase your health, and can also increase the chance of finding items. Conventionally speaking, you can complete the game without picking up artifacts (again, there are achievements), but you want to kill enemies with one shot, have a dozen health hearts in reserve, and so on. It is the artifacts that add the difficulty factor that will make the game unbearable even on (physically) the first difficulty level. To date, there are as many as 74 artifacts in the game. Picking up even a couple will allow you to feel the real hardcoreness of the gameplay, on par with which even Dark Souls will seem like a children’s fairy tale.

Items

In addition to artifacts, there are also items in the game that have positive properties. You can increase attack speed, health, get goodies like discovering a secret room, etc. There are 77 items in the game (yes, almost like artifacts), which means that, again, each new start of the game will be unique and a set of items can greatly change the balance of the game for the better (there is an item that allows you to increase the maximum amount of HP instead of treatment, in this way you can get at least 10 or 20 hearts health). But let’s not forget that most items will either drop from bosses or be obtained by exchanging artifacts with crows in the store. So, it’s up to you how strong your character will be.

Abilities

A little variety (and ease) of the gameplay is able, um…abilities! The starting ability allows you to…um…roll! (yes, yes, don’t expect them to be available all the time). There is the ability to plant bombs, freeze enemies, gain temporary invulnerability, temporarily accelerate the rate of fire, teleport to the hatch. There are only 9 abilities and this slightly limits the game in terms of character capabilities.

Opponents

Like most modern games, the enemies in this game are different for each level. There is a certain list of those that we will meet at other levels, but we should be prepared that new dangers and new enemies will await us at each new level. There are 34 enemies in total , which means there are almost 7 enemies per level. In my opinion, more than enough, because each enemy has its own way of attacking you, and with a larger accumulation of enemies, you simply will not be able to evade their attack, so what? Apparently, there will be much more deaths!

Enemies are divided into neutral and aggressive. The first ones don’t particularly react to you, even if you are somewhere nearby, while the others will attack you as soon as they see you. But you shouldn’t expect that every enemy will run after you immediately, being in his field of vision. There is probably a certain distance at which certain enemies turn their attention to you, which allows you to somehow control the gameplay and the sequence of enemy destruction.

Cooperative

Co-op has several modes, which can be divided into co-op and tournament . In the first, only two-four players can participate at the same time, in the second as many as four. The second is something like an arena where you can fight with your friends for the right to be called the best of the best. If you want to prove your superiority among players from all over the world, there is a daily competition with a general standings among all players. By the way, there are probably not many players, because we were always in the TOP-50, although we did not play very well at that time. There are no awards for the top positions in the table, so it is not a hunt to get into this mode.

Weapon

47 weapons allow you to get a wide variety of experience while playing the game. There are those that cause little damage, but with a lot of cartridges (something like shotguns), there are those that are more pointed, but have a large impact (railgun, for example), there are mass damage (grenade launcher, rocket launcher) that cause damage, including according to their own, and many others.

The right or wrong choice of weapons will allow you to either reach the end of the game or literally blow up at the next level after purchase, because you can buy any specific weapon (more expensive) or random (cheaper) in the store. Sometimes weapons can be found in the level, but more often you have to buy them anyway, and money is not always available. Weapons can be stolen, but then the seller will not sell you a single pistol until the end of the game, and therefore you will have to run with the stolen one literally until the end of your days.

Characters

You are given 10 characters to choose from . Each of them has its own starting weapon, attack range, movement speed, special feature (ability to clone a killed enemy, slowing down enemies by hitting them, killing with one shot, etc.), amount of HP. To a certain extent, it can be said that there are 10 character classes in the game, each of which will give you certain advantages to achieve certain goals. I’m sure you will find your favourite character, but if not – please! The game allows you to create your own unique character, for which there is a special character editor. Make one that is perfect for your preferred game mode. In my memory, there are very few games (are there any at all?) where you can create a game character yourself, not just changing the appearance, but giving him the desired weapon and adjusting the parameters.

Bosses

Bosses in the game…no, they didn’t guess. 6 pieces ! The point is that after the second boss there is a fork, thereby opening the way to another (more difficult, in my opinion) level, where there is a boss. Each boss is very unique both in terms of attack and behaviour. There are those that even after 120 hours of game time can cause difficulties, and if you come to the boss at a slower speed – death is almost inevitable (after all, again, your character is not always faster than the enemies).

It’s a bit disappointing that the bosses of each level are the same. I would like variety at least sometimes, however, I have an assumption that the game will receive many more updates, which means that bosses will most likely be added.

Plot

There is no plot as such. There is no history. There are no dialogues. This is what suggests that the game will develop and become overgrown with details. And although it is no longer in early access, there are many things that could be brought to the level of (at least) dendy games, where there are cut-scenes between levels that clarify who we are, what we do and what our goal. In the same Lost Castle, albeit in fragments, they still explain to us how we got to this point and why we are going somewhere. There is no such thing here, which is a little disappointing.

In the end

We have, to some extent, a unique game in which the difficulty is regulated more by your own greed than by increasing some parameters regarding the enemies. The system is very interesting in terms of implementation, and gives an experience that I don’t remember in any game I’ve played before (Dead Cells has curses, but that’s another story, Rampage Knights also has curses, which are closer to the concept of artifacts here, but, again, they don’t give bonuses).

I’ve always thought that the games were built on the basis of all sorts of utilities called Game Maker from the sly and could not be interesting outside of fans of old top-down J-RPGs, but the development of these engines has led to the fact that we get more than a quality project, which is worth every penny of its price.

At the moment, this is (as I understand it) the largest project of the Applava studio , and I hope that in the future we will see the development of this and the appearance of new projects. In 2018, the game won the Game Awards as Best PC Game. Is it worth buying it? I don’t know. But 86% of positive reviews say that the project is too good for fans of the genre to pass it by. How would I rate the game? I think the game deserves 5 out of 6 tentacles! Minus points for the lack of plot, otherwise it’s just a perfect game for spending time with friends 🙂