Fate of the Gods: Dragon Slayer – Reviewed

Fate of the Gods: Dragon Slayer – Reviewed

By Pete Nolan-Smith

[divider] [dropcap]F[/dropcap]ate of the Gods: Dragon Slayer is a quick and dirty little side scrolling PC adventure. Twenty five levels of jumping, slashing, and blasting your feminine avatar’s way down a dungeon. In your way is a series of trap spikes, evil knights, dastardly mages and bouncing fireballs. There’s no stopping till you reach the bottom and face the final creature, a fire breathing dragon. Sounds simple right? That’s because it is. With a Kickstarter goal of only £300 the game’s developer didn’t exactly shoot for the moon. What writer and designer Kassim Massop did manage to accomplish is actually pretty fun.  It was made as an accompaniment to his fantasy book series, though the game itself is devoid of a plot.

Dragon Slayer starts slow. Cautious jumps, diligent collection of loot, all foes vanquished. This strategy shortly becomes tedious. You have one finite health bar to reach the bottom and it’s best to charge through the dungeon’s levels at a break-neck speed. The learning curve is short and soon what began as cursing this games vile existence becomes smooth, fluid action.

There comes a point somewhere between dying for the sixtieth time and actually reaching the dragon that you realize how much fun you’re having. Each play through helps find the rhythm so badly needed to breeze through the early stages and the control to overcome the harder ones.

The controls are a bit touchy. Jump is a choice between a small skip, inches above the ground, and a giant leap into the air. It can be hard to master and a quick panic reaction can often land you in more trouble then you were trying to escape. Your character can also slide for a brief period of time; it’s necessary to dodge fireballs and mage attacks but is for a set distance and the distance tends to be a bit short. If the timing isn’t perfect you’re likely to wind up injuring yourself anyway.

The most devastating move in your arsenal is the drop attack. When moving downward from a jump you can perform a devastating slam into the ground. It destroys everything but the dragon on contact and is essential in taming the distance of out of control jumps.

Dragon Slayer has a place in the realm of modern casual gaming. There’s no denying the fact that it’s hard, but the game belongs a beyond the PC. There were unattained stretch goals that would have brought the title to mobile devices, which means that the possibility has been considered.  If this title was to ever gain traction this is where it needs to end up.

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[facebook][tweet][Google][pinterest][follow id=”Cliqist” size=”large” count=”true” ] [author image=”http://cliqist.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Peter_Nolan_Smith.jpg” ]Peter is an online journalist and freelance writer trying to make it in this crazy digital world. After leaving the University of King’s College’s journalism program he relocated to Toronto where he’s currently a working union actor and stuntman, with a short web series he’s written in development. Born in merry ol’ England, Peter remembers his love of video games starting with Zelda: Link to the Past. He loves big expansive virtual worlds and long walks on the beach.[/author]