Bloody Walls Reviews

An extremely basic game, Bloody Walls is a 2D action game which combines simple gameplay with Game Boy or NES style pixel graphics.

Bloody Walls is very simplistic – you control a man with a gun. He has some antidotes on him. Each antidote keeps him safe for 60 seconds, and they automatically are used as the last one expires.

You start out on the first of ten floors, where there are five mission-givers and a store – a store at which you can exchange antidotes for guns and mines. There are two guns other than the starting one – a SMG with slightly worse range but much better damage, and a shotgun with vastly worse range but massively more damage (and a slow reload speed). Mines can simply be deployed by clicking on them or pressing 3 or 4 (whichever slot they are loaded into), which causes them to be deployed at your feet. You can’t run over them, but your enemies can.

You have a limited amount of inventory space – 20 weight, and your gun takes up a chunk of that. The mines will generally occupy the rest unless you buy two guns for some crazy reason (you can sell your original one, too).

Each of the quest givers shows you a location in the levels below, though you don’t have to talk to them beforehand to get the relevant items. The quests are fulfilled simply by opening up a container on that level, and then bringing it back to your buddy on the first floor for a reward in a nearby locker.

The actual gamplay itself consists of shooting monsters in the vulnerable parts as they come towards you. There’s a small variety of enemies, but ultimately most of the types are pretty much the same save for hit points and movement speed. If any enemy touches you, you die and have to start the entire game over. But the game is very, very short – only ten floors, and most of the floors can be cleared within a minute each, with a couple exceptions.

The main exceptions to the general rule of “all the enemies are the same” come towards the end, when you encounter enemies which only are vulnerable if you’re far enough away from them, enemies which only open up when you’re right next to them, and enemy spawners which periodically deploy an enemy after you. These three things are the most dangerous kinds of enemies, though the spawners are ultimately easily dispatched after you’ve killed everything else. That said, they are *tedious* to dispatch, sometimes taking several minutes to get through the enemies they send at you before you can kill them all.

While in theory you are in danger of your time running out, in practice, it never happened to me; the real threat was the enemies.

But there really isn’t much variety here; the levels do vary slightly but they are almost identical from playthrough to playthrough, and frankly, there’s very little of interest to note here. Beating the game plays a very short cutscene, and then the game is over.

The whole thing is very minimalist, but ultimately, it is a fairly basic tactical challenge, and not even a very complicated one at that – there’s really a basic strategy which works on every level, and the only thing that the mines are for is so that if you screw up a bit you can avoid losing. The amount of clicking you have to do is kind of tiresome, and can make your wrist sore after a bit.

I can’t really recommend this game. It isn’t terrible, but ultimately it is a kind of forgettable experience that doesn’t really go anywhere.

Edit: The difficulty has been nerfed heavily by the new update that introduced Easy Mode (35 antidotes) and Hard Mode (5 antidotes) on October 1, 2016. The game was originally designed under Hard Mode. For those who don't understand how to use the store: you buy items using antidotes, and you get more antidotes by completing quests and returning the item to the person on the first floor, then opening up the lockbox beside of them.

Bloody Walls is a 4-bit, fast-paced, side-scrolling shooter title that features little story, cryptic gameplay, and an original Gameboy style color scheme. Before you decide to dive in to this free game, take into consideration that it is somewhat difficult, and there is zero hand holding; even the option in the menu to view the controls is vague at best.

As far as story goes, this game doesn't introduce anything innovative. Basically there was an accident at a bio-weapon research facility, and the entire world has become infected with a plague. There is an antidote that makes one immune for a small period of time from the airborne virus, and while you have a few vials on hand you need to reach the last floor of the research lab to get the rest to presumably save the few uninfected people who are with you. However, this is all told through the store page... you get a total of three cutscenes in game, beginning, end, and death, all of which are mere seconds long.

I just finished this adrenaline-fueled ride of chaos, and holy hell my hands are literally shaking; that in itself is a testament to the quality of this game. I had no idea if I'd be able to beat the last floor before time ran out, Bloody Walls did a good job of making me uncertain of myself when it came to both my in-game time management and my level of skill. There are a total of eight floors currently, with two more on the way, and each have a randomly generated pattern of monsters. Once you get your rhythm and the pace of each foe down, the gameplay becomes fairly easy but you need to be quick. Prior to the difficulty update, you started out with 5 (technically six) vials of antidote, each lasting for 65 seconds, so you have just over six minutes to beat seven floors if you don't complete any of the quests offered on the first floor.

In large doses Bloody Walls becomes extremely stale and repetitive. The entire experience currently lasts about half an hour, depending on your level of skill and how many times you die. If you die, you must restart from the beginning again. In order to access the 6th, 7th, and 8th floors, you must complete floors 2-5. The first floor is the safe house, where you can interact with 6 people who need you to gather items for them from each floor. There's also a shop in the safe house, but I couldn't figure out how to use it at all, so I beat the entire game with the slow as hell starting weapon. There are also lockboxes on each level, but that's another thing that I couldn't figure out how to use.

For a free, short, difficult, cryptic experience, Bloody Walls isn't half bad. It isn't often that we see Gameboy styled titles in this era, and it also isn't often that a game causes a large group of people to collectively have no idea about some of the in-game mechanics. It's hard, it's frustrating, and it's only fun in small doses, but Bloody Walls is certain to get your heart racing as you feverishly rush down eight flights of hell, splattering infected blood all over the place. Recommended for those that love a challenge, and don't mind figuring things out for themselves.

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