Headland Reviews

IT IS A GOOD GAME

A surprisingly good game. Simple, but quite good.

This is a hidden gem. Fun for the old and young alike!

Really enjoyable games especially on the Tilt5 AR headset

I'm a sucker for a brightly coloured 3rd Person Adventure game. Headland is a fairly straightforward example of the genre and while it does little to stand out as unique or groundbreaking, it does have a lot of charm and a stack of fun in it. I finished the game in just over 2 hours and have spent a bit of additional time replaying some levels, looking for secrets and trying to beat high scores. While short, there is replay value in here and enough to stretch out to 3-4 hours easily if players wanted to finish absolutely everything. Combat is tight and frenetic at times - it's pure hack and slash - as you take on a decent array of unique enemy types and the very cool "Pale" enemies. Given the length of the game, I was thoroughly impressed with the different types of enemies Headland has to offer. Combat's only real weak area for me was the lack of transparency in environments and obstacles with enemies hiding behind them. I died 4 times during my play through and all 4 times were the results of enemies disappearing underneath over hanging cliffs and attacking without visibility from below. The Controls are very basic with only attack, shield, and dodge required, yet the mapping did feel a little counter-intuitive (with B traditionally being a dodge button being used as attack), and it'd be great to see controller customisable mapping in the future..While there was only one boss fight in the game, it is a great battle and I would've really liked to have encountered a few more boss types to break up the level grind with boss rounds. Level design is pretty strong here too. Most levels are fairly short and straight forward while still complex enough to hold secret passageways and caves, with only a few levels in the later game extending much more and requiring the player to undertake grander tasks to reach the end. I would've liked to have seen more complexity and scale to some of the maps. The level design was very clean with player direction staying very clear the whole time, it's just that some levels felt cut short too soon when there was still narrative to explore. Sound in the game is decent, with the music cutting through very nicely. I was particularly fond of the amped up swing drums during the battle sequences. Speaking of Narrative, it's a nice, sweet, story of a kid who's a day dreamer and finds an escape from reality in his fantastical fictitious world on Headland. I would've really loved to see this explored a lot more, striking juxtaposition or simile between his real world and his fantasy world. There's potential for a lot more story in this game that could've really kept my engagement for a lot longer. I think the small team at Northplay have put together a very fun and quirky game. It's bright, it's fun, it's fast, and it's chaotic. I didn't encounter any bugs on my playthrough, and the content that is in the game feels well pieced together. This feels like a project put together by a team really wanting to release the best possible product. I thoroughly enjoyed fighting them all in the credits. My only real criticism is that the game feels far too short. There's a great premise in here and story potential that could be explored and expanded on much more than there is.

Decent little adventure game. Took me about 3 hours to beat while getting all secrets in each level. I got the game at 90% off during the Steam sale and was pretty happy with the game for that price. Worth grabbing when on a discount, but I think I would have been slightly disappointed at full price.