Blood Alloy: Reborn

Written by Sean Colleli on 2/29/2016 for PC  

Blood Alloy Reborn has had a tough time of it. In an indie development story that’s becoming far too common, it began life as a Kickstarter back in 2013. The Kickstarter crashed and burned rather tragically, sending Blood Alloy back to the drawing board. Originally conceived as a cyberpunk Metroidvania-style 2D adventure, it was scaled way back into a single-arena score chaser. Suppressive Fire has been hard at work over the past two years just trying to get the combat system polished, but after all this time can Blood Alloy fulfill its original potential? Well…maybe.

The game stars cyborg assassin Nia Rhys. From the looks of it she’s missing at least half of her organic body, Robocop-style, but the combat chassis she’s wired into more than makes up for it with a variety of lethal adaptations. She wields a blaster in one arm and—what else—a katana with the other, and her abilities are primarily acrobatic. The game intends for her to be a shooting cyborg buzz saw and the tutorial wastes no time in teaching you how to dispatch targets while airborne.

More advanced moves include kick-flips, wall-jumping, dashing and charging weapons up for homing attacks. The tutorial course can even get a bit obstinate, which had me worried about the actual game portions of Blood Alloy Reborn. The combat system is supposed to make you feel elegant, fast and supremely dangerous, and under prime conditions it does. The problem is that Blood Alloy Reborn could control an awful lot better, and the tutorial doesn’t really prepare you for the kind of action you’ll face.

First off, don’t even attempt this game with a keyboard and mouse. It was clearly designed for a controller of some kind and the options menu even recommends an Xbox One pad; not having swallowed the XBone kool-aid yet I found an old Xbox 360 pad to be perfectly adequate. The issue isn’t the controller however, it’s the nature and responsiveness of the control system itself. Blood Alloy tries to play like a Metroidvania fused to a twin-stick shooter, but both aspects come off feeling clunky and unrefined. While I had some degree of fine reticle control using a mouse, the keyboard was sluggish for movement. When I switched to a controller, moving around was easier but the control stick sensitivity was all over the place, making it pretty difficult to line up precision shots.

Maybe the problem is that the game plays so bloody fast. Nia Rhys just rockets back and forth within the game’s tiny battle arenas and while this is exhilarating at first.  However harnessing that speed in any effective way is a real hassle. She will slow down a touch when you dodge, but this is more of a momentary bullet time effect. Pair this twitchy movement with a never ending swarm of flying robot enemies and you’ll be dying soon and often.

I think the main issue here is that Blood Alloy was originally conceived as a Metroidvania—a slower, more methodical kind of game where stylishly dispatching enemies would make the protagonist stand out. As a score chaser however it doesn’t quite work, because that style of game requires fast, straightforward mastery of relatively simple controls, and then the complexity comes from a marriage of reflex and strategy. Trying to keep the multiplier going in Blood Alloy just gave me a headache, because the game rewards play variety and as a result I was trying to recall half of Nia’s moves at any given moment.

In terms of production values the game has a distinctive art style clearly inspired by cyberpunk anime, with a pulsing techno soundtrack that is in a word, appropriate. The pixel art seems to be imitating brawlers and shmups of the mid 90s, but there isn’t a lot of gradient or depth to the arenas so they come off looking a little flat. So far Blood Alloy looks and sounds adequate, but I feel like it needs a visual overhaul to distinguish it from the yawning morass of indie titles clogging up Steam.

At this stage Blood Alloy Reborn has the look and feel of a very mature alpha. It is competent and its enthusiasm is palpable, but it still only feels like maybe two-thirds of a complete game. Everything about it screams “homage,” to cyberpunk icons like Ghost in the Shell, Blade Runner, Robocop and even some elements from Metal Gear Solid. That’s all well and good, but I’m worried that Blood Alloy Reborn still hasn’t found its own voice. I’d love to see this game turn into an addictive arcade actioner and eventually a compelling 2D adventure, but as its stands there isn’t a lot there to get hooked on…yet.