Rating of
1/5
We Are Broken
Chris Kavan - wrote on 06/26/18
When you are desperate for a local 3-player game, well, desperate times call for desperate measures. Now, on the surface, We Are the Dwarves looks like a safe, if short, bet. I mean, it looked decent - bare-bones, maybe, but playable. And, hey, if shady Russians can churn out halfway decent games, the Ukranians could certainly hash out a competent game. Some of them might, sadly, this group can not.
We Are the Dwarves starts off okay, sure the enemies are basic, the game has tiny test and your powers are never explained, but I figured it was simple enough that none of that mattered. Three players, three dwarves, of course I was the bruiser, Smashfist, whose powers included swinging his weapons for decent damage, yelling to knock back enemies (and off the side of cliffs) and a dash attack (that could also knock enemies off cliffs) with an attack at the end. The fourth ability was some kind of passive thing - shield, healing - I never really figured it out. And I never used this special ability you power up, that might have been healing too as for no apparent reason my character would regain health at random times. Whatever, each power has a meter that needs to be refilled before you can use it again.
In any case, the barely-existent story has these three dwarves making their way through a cave for... reasons? I don't know, the text was very small and hard to read. They just need to get through this cave and back to their tribe or caravan or something. The cave is filled with blue ore - which we managed to pick up two or three before the game just stopped us. We thought it might be for health or powering up abilities, but, no - health is refilled in another way and even with low power meters, those blue ores just couldn't be picked up. Given that there is no way to level up your character or abilities, I'm not sure what the blue ore was for in the end.
The game has so, so, so many issues. Sudden game-over screens for no apparent reason, falling through the floor, getting stuck in animations and unable to use some or all of your powers, having to stand stock still to revive and opponent, healing that heals you and the enemy, items that do nothing, no explanation of powers, barely-readable text and ever-spawning enemies. We made it to the first boss - which we fought several times, only to have the game crash when one of the characters became stuck in the wall and in an animation - which finally caused us to give up.
This is bad - like Flatulent Orcs-level bad - this is something I expect on steam with 5000 achievements and nothing else. Even desperate times wouldn't make me want to touch this one again.
