You’d think one of these days the zombie well would dry up. Yet somehow the gaming world keeps churning out 8-bit pixel art game after randomly/procedurally generated game after crafting survival game.
Snark aside, Creekside Creep Invasion is one of the first this year in a soon to be long line of Halloween inspired games. If you want to continue the cynical attitude, you could say “take advantage of Halloween.”
An Overflowing Feature Bag
You wouldn’t necessarily be too far off base either. At first, it has all the hallmarks you’ve come to expect. An 8-bit pixel art style, randomly generated everything, and rouge-like elements. It’s the indie game equivalent of recent Medal of Honor games: take everything currently popular and put them in a blender. It even borrows heavily from Double Fine’s Costume Quest, a game that is now six years old.
In Creekside Creep Invasion you play as a kid on Halloween night who wakes up to find all the adults are gone. He climbs out of bed and finds various monsters have taken over. So he has to use a variety of randomly generated weapons to fight these randomly generated enemies in randomly generated levels. There’s a leveling system to go with the rouge-like elements, as well as various costumes that give you different abilities.
The game looks competent from a technical level. It all sounds solid, the art isn’t terrible, and the Kickstarter campaign says all the right things. But how much of that is because it so thoroughly scavenges from the likes of Nuclear Throne, Darkest Dungeon, Hyper Light Drifter, and countless other indie darlings?
As is usually the case with Kickstarter projects, none of it overtly feels cynical. Developers Ouch Giver Games say they’re just a husband and wife duo, which is cute. Peel away the fluff though, and you’ll find a game as cynical as any Ubisoft or EA game.
I don’t see an issue with someone making a game that hits some popular feature points. Besides, I dig the setting of this one, least it’s not a fantasy or sci-fi world.