Blasted Fortress Reviews

Fun, good concept, but too too grindy. Not enough fun collapsing towers over and over again.

So, what makes these kinds of games fun for me (Crush the Castle, Angry Birds, Some Math Game I Played During Elementary School That Wasn't Blocked), is seeing everything collapse after knocking down a pillar or taking out a wall. Though I also keep the objectives in mind, seeing a gigantic structure crumble to dust with just a few well-placed cannonballs/dynamite/boulders is what's fun about these games. In Blasted Fortress, while the cannonballs are tied to physics, the fortresses aren't. Taking out an entire layer to a fortress does not split apart the roof and send it tumbling down, and taking out the bottom of a tower does not cause it to topple. Nothing moves, actually... no matter how much damage you do, every (intact) block stays exactly where it was at the beginning of the siege. This is my biggest complaint; it's taking away my reward. I don't give a shit about making money, or completing random levels, or completing minigames, or whatever other side content the game has to offer. I just want the fortress to be fucking BLASTED. As for all of the side content, it comes completely out of the blue after that short (but helpful) tutorial when you start a new game. It tells you how to shoot, how to block, and where to go if you want to do more shooting and blocking, but for minigames, passive income, monster hunting(?), voodoo magic, penalty blocks (and different block types in general), and whatever else I missed in the ten minutes I played, you're going to have to read a few tooltips. Thankfully, the UI design doesn't make this very hard. Developer, if you're reading this, I would suggest broadening the tutorial a little bit, or have a very tiny tutorial compaign to explain a few more details before the player is thrust into the town screen. Having so much information thrust in front of me at once turned me off from the game more than it excited me. I won't nitpick any more than this, but really, it should be more like what it's inspired by... Angry Birds.

[h1]Review of Blasted Fortress - 9th of January 2015 (version 1.15)[/h1] [b] I would in its current state, at this price point, not recommend this game. There is more content coming supposedly, so I will update my review once that happens and I get a chance to try the updated version.[/b] The Good (Positive) [list] [*] Level Editor is always a plus. [*] Simple fun for a casual game, took me about 1 hour 15-20 min to finish all content, probably able to do it in 1 or less. (Note: This does not include achievements, just unlocking all things in-game etc.) [/list] The Bad (Negative) [list] [*] Gets very repetitive, very fast. [*] The other ammunition feels weak. I ended up only using the first 2 types (normal cannonball and 3-shot). Leveling up the passive perks didn't feel to make any considerable change. [*] Feels like there is still a lot of unused potential, fixable in content patches. F.ex would be nice to upgrade the Farm to get more money per meat, etc. [*] There are three spells in the game, but I think I used them 5 times and that was that. Feels like a waste buying the one-time use spells. [/list] The Meh (Neutral/mixed) [list] [*] The vault/hoard where you can choose to save money is very nice, and seeing the money spray all over once you start filling it up is nice. However, gaining gold goes very slow, and you use it to purchase all your ammunition. [*] With the slow gold rate I ended up making a new level in the editor that was filled with the resource boxes. This gave me some decent income, but at the same time it had the possibility to crash the game cause of just too much happening. [*] I had a few cases where there game turned extremely sluggish and was chugging along at 3-5 FPS. From what I noticed this happens when a block gets semi-stuck at the start of a level, which seems to affect the physics engine. [*] The "boss" fights are kinda meh, as they are all more or less exactly the same. Another thing that could be resolved with a patch. [/list] Overall, not the worst game in history, but very repetitive and the lack of content (unlock everything in 1 hourish) makes this a not recommended purchase as of now, in my opinion.. [b]In a video I watched on YouTube that was posted in October last year, the developer mentions that Blasted Fortress 2 is underway. This should also make you really consider if you should get this game or not. Hopefully they do not keep back features etc, and put those in BF2, but we will have to wait and see.[/b]