Achilles: Survivor is a new bullet-hell survivor-like. Much like Jötunnslayer: Hordes of Hel, this game brings the Vampire Survivor-like genre into the world of historical myth, with Achilles: Survivor portraying the titular hero and the Trojan War he was a part of. While a little weak on the graphical side of things, Achilles: Survivor impresses with its gameplay and could really grow into something special during its development cycle.
The first thing you are going to notice about Achilles: Survivor, as with any game, is the visuals. Achilles: Survivor, unfortunately, doesn’t really wow me in this regard.
The maps look pretty good and certainly feel like the setting they’re trying to portray. However, the character models and designs fail to impress. Generally, the characters in the game go for this kind of boring, super-realistic look that lacks any real discernible style and fails to capture the imagination. The characters’ outfits look like they were pulled from 2004’s Troy, which if that’s a look you like, then you won’t mind it here. Enemies suffer from this blandness a little less, and some of the later unlockable heroes are way more visually interesting, though still looking a bit generic in their design. Also, it takes a lot to unlock them, which feels a bit like sifting through a mile of sand to find a shiny quarter.
These design choices aren’t as noticeable as the characters’ bland animations, however. At no point in the game do Achilles: Survivor’s titular survivors seem to pick up or swing a weapon. Really, they don’t seem to do much beyond run in these really stiff, awkward running animations, allowing your power pickups to just happen around them. A little more visual flair would go a long way to bringing these characters to life and making the game more visually interesting to look at.
With that out of the way, I actually don’t have many complaints about Achilles: Survivor, even for a game that is just now entering Early Access.
The gameplay in Achilles: Survivor is pretty solid, combining the familiar survivor-like mechanics with a neat twist. If you’re unfamiliar, games in this genre have you surviving on an open map, with increasingly larger and stronger waves of enemies spawning to kill you. You attack with automated abilities and gain more as you level up by killing the enemies, leaving you with nothing more complicated to do than walking around and soaking up XP while your powers do the work.
Achilles: Survivor switches this up by adding the ability to construct buildings across the map. Doing so requires resources, which have to be gathered by exploring the map and defending mines against the waves of enemies. These building locations can then be constructed into defensive towers, support buildings, or forges to upgrade your abilities. These buildings have limited lifespans, adding a bit of a tower defense mechanic to the mix.
This is pretty cool, but I think the game would make better use of this system if you could place the buildings anywhere on the map, rather than just in fixed locations. I also think more “production”-style buildings could add to increase the tower-defense-lite side of the gameplay. As it stands, most of the buildings don’t really provoke much of a desire to be defended, as they are either a) towers that beat back the nearby enemies by themselves, or b) serve more or less a one-time purpose and don’t really need to be kept up to benefit from them.
I criticized the game’s visual design, but where Achilles: Survivor really impressed me was in its sound design. Your abilities feel powerful thanks to the excellent sound effects assigned to each one; spears stab, swords slice, and explosions boom in incredibly satisfying ways, truly making you feel like a god on the battlefield.
A little more disappointing but still good are the visual effects of said abilities. Carried a lot by the sound effects, these attacks tend to be fairly bland-looking, being nothing more than glowing translucent weapons or shapes. They are, however, pretty well animated, and when you pair them with the aforementioned great sound design, they really do feel like they have an impact.
Achilles: Survivor partitions its levels out with scaling difficulty, where you can play several levels before things start to really pick up. However, each of these levels still requires you to survive a fixed amount of time, so I wish the developers had instead skipped the 20–40 minutes of levels you can complete with no hassle and just included one level per chapter, difficult to pass on your first try, with unlockable difficulty modifiers. My first game in Achilles: Survivor was such a breeze that I ended up standing in one place for a great deal of it; however, it was still a 20-minute time investment, and I didn’t quite feel a sense of accomplishment beating it.
To summarize, while the game excels in gameplay with its resource management, building mechanics, and satisfying sound effects that make abilities feel impactful, the visual presentation falls short. Character models and animations feel stiff and uninspired, with a lack of dynamic movement or style that detracts from the overall experience. The maps and enemies are slightly more engaging, but the design is still fairly generic. Additionally, the game’s difficulty curve needs tweaking, as early levels are too easy and lack a sense of accomplishment. Despite these issues, Achilles: Survivor shows great potential, particularly with its unique gameplay mechanics, though its visual presentation and difficulty adjustments could be improved to match the engaging core concept.
Pros:
- Great sound design
- Interesting tower-defense twist on the familiar survivor-like gameplay formula
Cons:
- Not very interesting visually, with stiff animations and underwhelming character designs and effects
- A difficulty curve that can leave you a little bored in the game’s early levels
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