Deadcore is another game that combines elements from different genres. It has the first person platforming of games like Metroid Prime. It has the parkour feeling of Mirror’s Edge. It has some puzzles that rival the complexity of Portal. Most of the online store descriptions you’ll find for the game describe it as a First-Person Shooter. While you do eventually wind up with a gun, shooting isn’t really all that lethal.
PROS: Beautiful environments. Challenging game play. Interesting concept for a story.
CONS: Possibly too challenging for some due to a high difficulty. Minor glitches.
CREEPY: Sentient blocks that float around hoping to make you fall.
Deadcore has two modes. There’s a story mode, and a mode for speed runs. You can also play the story mode in the speed run mode if you want to try to see how quickly you can beat the entire game. Speed Run mode also lets players time attack individual levels, or sections of levels called Tracks. Of course you won’t be able to do much in this mode right away, as most of it is unlocked by going through the story mode. If you do play through a speed run setting, you’ll be competing against others on the leaderboard. There are score categories for each of the levels, tracks, and story mode. Deadcore also has a lot of achievements dedicated players can shoot for. There is even one everyone will likely get called Digital Barbecue. This is because dying five hundred times will unlock it. You will more than likely die over five hundred times in this game.
The story in Deadcore is honestly pretty cool. It centers around your character trying to escape a mysterious tower that reaches high into the Thermosphere. As you go through the game you’ll stumble upon icons. Most of these open up entries in a log book. When you go into the log book, you can look at the entries you’ve discovered. It’s like a lot of other titles in the sense that you’re finding journals. Some of the entries will be logs from previous climbers who died trying to escape the tower. Some of them will be discussions between your unnamed character, and a computer. Other entries detail some of the power up items you’ll discover during the game. Deadcore also takes a page from Valve by letting the world craft a lot of the story. It’s cold, soulless, and yet feels like there was life wiped out by this twisted, technological tower. The music in the game is some of the eeriest electronica heard in a soundtrack. While there are some thumping tunes during hectic times, Most of the time it’s brooding, and creepy. It captures the mood of isolation, and the desperation of the story nicely.
Some of the other things you’ll find are power ups, and Easter eggs. Deadcore is very much a First-Person Adventure game. Obviously, the object of the game is to climb your way to the top of the tower to escape. The aforementioned gun is predominantly used as a tool. There aren’t any traditional enemies to speak of. You won’t be scoring headshots, or getting into fire fights with space pirates. Instead, the enemies you face are more or less parts of a security system. Sometimes cubes will show up to try to knock you off of a platform. Other times these electronic pods called Mosquitoes will gang up on you. Or you’ll find yourself turning off fans with shots from your gun while you’re trying to evade lasers.
The story mode is only five levels long. But these are some of the longest levels of any game you will ever play. Each one is broken up by several sections. These are referenced as tracks. The first stage is the approximate bottom of the tower where you begin the game. The second one you’ll begin to see some progress as the world textures get smaller. Stage three things really heat up, as you’ll be inside a large chunk of the tower. Stage four is a tremendously large stage, with several tracks, and there is even a substantial amount of back tracking. The final stage is fairly brief. You will be very thankful about that fact because Deadcore is not an easy game. Frankly, it becomes the Dark Souls of puzzle-platformer hybrids by the middle of the game. Some of the sections in the game even put the hardest Super Mario Galaxy stages to shame.
For many, this game may even prove too hard, resulting in broken controllers, mice, keyboards, and monitors. But if you can keep calm, and practice you can eventually figure out exactly what to do. This game will force you to think under pressure. Each area of each track is a puzzle. Yet there isn’t always only one way to solve it. Sometimes you’ll have a choice of which path of pitfalls you wish to take. But again, getting around each pitfall is its own challenge. I already mentioned the lasers, cube bots, and bug bots trying to make you fail. But it gets even more difficult.
Along the way the game will present you with new mechanics. For example, you’ll come across gravity switches. These create areas where you’ll be able to temporarily walk on the walls. Sometimes you’ll have to go through a modified gravity area, into a non-modified gravity area, into another modified gravity area. All within a few seconds. Other times you’ll run into flipping blocks, right out of Super Mario Galaxy, where one side is electrified. Landing on this side is instant death. Other times you’ll find fan blades that you need to shut off while avoiding moving boxes with laser beams on them. Because not shutting them off will blow you off of a surface. Leading to a subsequent death. Or go through a anti gravity area with a ton of enemies, while trying to avoid moving laser walls. Or any other number of difficult scenarios.
The game bases a lot of its maneuvering on platform jumping. If you’ve played a lot of Metroid Prime, or Mirror’s Edge you’ll have a good idea of what to expect. Much of the level design is focused on pixel perfect jumping, mixed with the aforementioned challenges. All of which will force you to complete them as quickly as possible. This is also why there is a focus on speed running. If you do choose to speed run in Deadcore you’ll need to master the dash mechanic once you find it. Dash acts as a fast travel, as well as a third jump. You can jump, then double jump. But once you find the dash power up, you’ll be able to dash after double jumping. Plus, a lot of the difficult sections pretty much require using it. There is a handy meter on the gun that measures how much dash power you have remaining. So you’ll have to decide on the fly if you need to do short dashes, or hold the dash down, and use up the entire bar. The dash recharges if you hold still. Unfortunately, the gun’s ammunition does not. So you also have to keep an eye on the number of shots remaining.
In between tracks there are checkpoints. Like many of the 2D games that celebrate the difficulty of 8-bit NES games, Deadcore gives you unlimited lives. You can re-spawn at the last checkpoint you’ve reached at any time by pressing R. If you die you will also re-spawn there. You are going to be pressing R a lot, as well as suffering many deaths. Every missed jump will lead to a fall to your doom, the path of an enemy, or to an earlier point in the track. Similarly, you’re going to want to master the mechanics, and power ups as soon as you can. Because the difficulty only amps up. Especially since none of the traps, or enemies you shoot stay off. Everything you disable eventually turns itself back on. It’s kind of like Evil Otto, from Berzerk in that nothing can be killed. Even the bosses can only be temporarily disabled. So you’ll find yourself disabling something, and moving. Fairly often. Especially near the end of the game. You’ll also want to seek out the power ups, and some of the Easter eggs. Some of them are actually messages from the developers instructing you to email them information from the secrets you find. Doing so gets you some cool media like music from the soundtrack.
Along with the high difficulty, Deadcore does have some minor problems that will add to some of the aggravation. Sometimes there will be some slight hiccups in the game’s response time. This means it might not recognize you’ve pressed the jump button, leading to a seemingly cheap death. It isn’t the worst thing in the world. But this is a game that relishes the idea of speed running. Any little interruption in performance can result in the loss of precious seconds. There were also a few rare times I ran into clipping problems in my play through. As such, I found myself stuck in walls, and forcing a re-spawn. Sometimes this happened when I was ever so close to a checkpoint, which became really frustrating.
Some players might also dislike the lack of customization options. You can’t choose things like the kinds of filters, or post processing. You have to go to the custom setting to even see them, and even then everything is a low, medium, or high check box. You can re-bind your keys, set screen resolution, and your field of vision. But you can’t do much of anything in terms of audio settings. These problems don’t ruin the game, or stop you from being able to complete it. But will lead to a few really grating moments for some of you. A few more checkpoints could have also been used. Because some of the sections between them are so long they begin to feel like levels themselves. This is especially true during the next to last stage, where backtracking becomes a big part of the game play.
When you do finish the game you will be treated to one of two endings depending on which paths you took, and what areas you’ve discovered. It’s certainly a satisfying finish for the story given here. It also leaves you with a sense of accomplishment. Overall, Deadcore is a really well made game. The rare glitch aside, it functions pretty responsively. The difficulty is high, but the game feels rewarding when you complete tough areas. It has an engrossing look, and sounds that pull you into its world of uneasiness. The mechanics, for the most part are fun to use once you’ve gotten a handle on them. There are versions for all three major computer operating systems. You can play this on Windows, Macintosh, or Linux. Plus, the system requirements aren’t very high. Most computers built over the last seven years should be able to run it.
5-Bits Games has really put out something special. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t tell you that it isn’t for everyone. If you are the sort of player who is turned off by a high difficulty, you will probably not like the experience 5-Bits Games has delivered to the world. If however, you thrived on games like Dark Souls you’ll want to play this game. If you’ve got the patience, and love dystopian settings it’s certainly worth picking up.
Although you may want to purchase a spare keyboard in case you lose your cool.
Final Score: 8 out of 10
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