Indie developers are often inspired by games they grew up with and it is more than apparent that DIRIGO GAMES had played through the classic Doom games before. Working with publisher HOOK, they recently released Kingdom of the Dead, an FPS game with hand-drawn environments and classic FPS-style gameplay, on Steam. While there is a lot to love with this game, the overall experience does have a few issues to look over to truly enjoy the full game.

Story

Multiple portals to the underworld have been opened and it is up to you to close them all! As the demon handler, you must go to each location where a portal is known to have been opened and make sure to take out all threats you come across while attempting to close the portal. Once all portals are closed, the world will be safe once again.

The story itself is very plain and straightforward, however, they do manage to throw in some funny lines throughout the game. There is very little dialogue, mostly taking place in the beginning and end of missions, so you know that the story is pretty much just a reason for this game to send the player to these various places and a reason why there are demons abound.

Gameplay

This game is a fast-paced FPS title where you are basically running and gunning the whole time. On the higher difficulties, you want to be constantly moving so you won’t die, but even on the easier difficulty, you will need to be swift. You will start the level out with your sword and handgun, but always end up with a full arsenal by the time you reach the final boss. No weapons or ammo rolls over to the next mission, so feel free to use it up!

The controls themselves are kept simple where you just have movement, shooting, and switching your weapon. One thing that they don’t teach you is that your sword has a special attack. Knowing how to use this attack is actually crucial because you will need it for the final mission. To save you the hassle of figuring it out, since it isn’t really mentioned in a way that the player will be forced to learn despite its mandatory use, you simply get a few kills with the sword to fill its blood meter (as seen on the bottom right where the weapon icons are) and then click the middle-mouse button to use the swords special attack.

As you make your way through the levels, you will find the guns just laying about, but ammo is typically hidden inside of boxes and other breakables. While you can hit them with your weapon, they break on impact so you can just run into them for a quick pick up. Enemies with similar weapons will also drop the ammo for that weapon, which is helpful.

Finding your way through the level is easy thanks to there being a constant icon that shows you where to go. There are a handful of times that it is just showing you the general area to be in, but for the most part, it is a very accurate guide. A similar icon that can show up will take you to a hidden object that can be found. Each level has a hidden area and you have to get really close to it before an icon shows up, if it even does, so keep an eye out for that.

While completing each mission, you will have a secondary mission to free all of the prisoners. You will pass by them on your way through the level and just running into them frees them, so this is simple. Just make sure you don’t hit them while fighting because they die really easily.

Audio and Visual

The music and sound effects to this game are pretty good and the soundtrack is a light-energy fueled rock-style piece. The problem is that it is used in a lot of the maps and only occasionally is there a variation, so it gets a bit repetitive.

I love the art style choice they went with for this game! Keeping everything black-and-white throughout, giving a color palette for players to choose the tone they want the game to have visually, and having everything hand-drawn is really neat. I wish there weren’t so many areas that were so dark that you couldn’t see, but there was always a light that helped guide the way forward - not to mention the icon.

Replayability

Thanks to there being three different difficulties, there is definitely some replayability to this game. Plus, I noticed after I beat the game that the save file still has one case file not checked off while the other nine are, but there are no other levels to pick in the game when you load up. There is likely a hidden or unlockable level in this game as well.

What Could Be Better

There were simply too many dark areas in the game. From empty space to sections with enemies hiding in the shadows, there was just very little chance of seeing enemies before they attacked first. It’s okay to have a moment like this here and there, but it felt overly consistent in this game.

The story for the game was just way too generic and simplistic. When the twist at the end happened, I wasn’t even slightly surprised. There was just nothing special or new about the story whatsoever.

Verdict

Kingdom of the Dead is a solid FPS experience, despite its moderate design. Other than the art style, the game has no real “wow” factor and maintains a somewhat dull reasoning behind the events. As a mindless shooter game, this title is amazing levels that are balanced in each difficulty and provide a wide variety of guns, plus the different boss for each stage was a nice touch. I just don’t recommend taking this game seriously when you head in to play it - unless you are talking about its difficulty. Overall, a moderate FPS experience that is fun to play through, even if only once.