The Smiths once asked “Does the body rule the mind? Or does the mind rule the body?” The answer was “I dunno”, so not a particularly helpful song overall. Even so, it’s one of those eternal philosophical questions that’s great for navel-gazing but utterly impractical otherwise, the kind of thing late-teen/early-twenties think is deep before getting over it. The answer, of course, is that the mind is part of the body so it’s a false dichotomy, unless you’re a specific necromancer to whom it’s become a very real concern.
A House Divided Cannot Stand, But a Body Divided Is Even More Off Balance
Skull Horde is a dungeon-crawling auto-battler where a necromancer’s body decapitated itself, burying the head to molder away lost and forgotten. The head, however, had other plans, and now it’s raising an army of the undead to march through the dungeons on the way to its revenge, building up its army from a collection of skeletal scrubs into a force of elite units. Swordsmen, pikemen, and archers fill out the roster at the start but advancing through the caves earns the cash to buy more powerful units, filling out the ranks until there’s a small army clustered around the floating skull. While the game isn’t out yet, the Skull Horde demo landed the other day and it’s a lot of fun, guiding the units down the levels as the chaotic skirmishes keep ramping up.
Review: Bore Blasters
Bore Blasters may have one rough edge in terms of its time limit, but the rest of the game is a solid blaster.
Starting off with a handful of warriors, the necromancer’s skeletal head floats along with its crew following behind. When an enemy comes into view the horde attacks automatically, with the only commands available being a “rally around me” for when multiple threats from different directions have pulled everyone apart and a rallying cry to boost combat effectiveness. The head is almost but not quite defenseless, having a single shot to ping enemies with, and the bulk of the gameplay is down to positioning and watching the battle unfold. Once each floor of the dungeon is complete the cash earned from treasure chests and other means can be spent to beef up the army, adding new units or auto-upgrading when three of the same type are in the party. Most soldiers can be upgraded twice, from minion to veteran to champion, and getting a champion in all the different classes of matching combat types gives a permanent upgrade bonus for the run. you may only have six types of warrior in the party, but once the upgrade is earned you can dismiss one class to make room for another so long as you don’t mind losing its powerful champion unit.
The dungeons are filled not just with monsters but shops and other points of interest, allowing for upgrades on the fly. A standard shop will let you buy new units mid-level instead of waiting for the end, while relics can be bought using the corpuscule currency. Gongs can give nice rewards at the cost of a pitched battle, and other random stations can do everything from lower the threat level (which is constantly increasing as time passes and doesn’t lessen between floors) to sending you back a couple of floors with experience and cash intact. The right shops and waystations can do wonders for a run, but you’ll need some luck for that to happen. When things go bad and the necromancer’s army is defeated it loses a life, and when all three lives are gone the run is over. Being a necromancer, though, minion death is only temporary so a little waiting will put the horde back into top fighting shape, although waiting too long may not be a great idea thanks to the threat meter ticking away towards the next difficulty level.
As a first-release demo there has already been one patch to adjust a number of features, including the relic-drop rate that made my first run last week a bit of a cakewalk. Playing again today was more of a challenge and ended in failure, which sounds weird to consider a positive but winning just by showing up is only entertaining for a very short time. The demo covers the first biome through to its boss encounter, with none of the meta progression that will turn the full game from a spirited brawl into an all-out battle. It’s still a good time, though, with more units to experiment with than a single run will hold giving it some nice replayability. The necromancer’s head is not happy at all with its traitorous body, and if it has to carve a path through the underworld on its way to revenge then there’s going to be a lot fewer oozing abominations crawling around.
