Bardbarian

Developer: TreeFortress Games
Steam Release: Apr 2014
Hours Played: 5.6
Similar To: Castle Crashers / Dead Pixels
Rating: 2/5 Parsnips

GAMEPLAY

Bardbarian is a bit of an unusual one that could easily have slipped into the Miscellaneous section. Covering about four or six screen's worth of space is the 2D battleground. Within this area you control a bearded rocker who can move in any direction. He is armed with his inseparable guitar. On the far left is your town which must be defended at all costs while on the far right are three caves where an assortment of monsters slowly emerge from in waves. Their sole intention is to destroy your base. The bard himself cannot attack these enemies so with Xbox controller in hand (for that is the best device to use) you press the trigger along with the X, Y or B button - depending on which of the three friend you want and, after an inspired 3-second guitar solo, the corresponding helper pops out onto the scene and scurries up next to you to help. 

BALANCE & PACE

You can buy up to three friends with musical notes collected on the battlefield but you upgrade this to more as you go. In short, you run up to the enemies as they slowly encroach upon your town as your helpers hurl various missiles at them in an effort to reduce their numbers to nil before moving onto the next wave. Let the monsters obliterate your town or have the bardbarian reach zero hit-points, and the run ends. You won't complete all 20 waves in your first session because your helpers and their abilities won't be strong enough so you permanently upgrade helpers with collected gold between runs. New and more powerful friends also get unlocked as you reach higher waves and your hero and town can get upgrades as well. It's a bit of a grind but a pleasure to see the different unlocks and how well your entourage gains power.  

PRESENTATION & DESIGN 

Despite the simplicity of the unusual  gameplay, there is plenty going on under the hood with the upgrade-shop having a major role. Clicking Play from the start-screen and choosing one of three possible profiles will first take you to the said shop. To a testosterone-fueled chunky guitar, you can upgrade by selecting the unit, hero or town tab. Unit upgrades feature a total of 16 unlockable characters including appearances of characters from Octodad, Shellrazer and Super Meat Boy. The Hero tab gives you 11 upgrades (take the double gold ASAP) while Town gives you six. All upgrades bar three allow you to max-out with up to 5-star strength so settle in for some heavy grinding. You could also put the game in a Halloween-themed skin by going Halloween mode should you so desire.  

PROGRESS SYSTEM

Your ultimate aim will be to defeat the game's 20 levels and it always shows you what wave you've reached on starting. The upgrade-shop of course, with its tons of upgrades, is a good indicator in showing how strong you and your entourage have become. However, the game also comes packaged with a couple of arcade-style mini-games to divert your attention should the grind get you down. For one, there is survival mode which just throws you into an arena style environment surrounded by ever-increasing monsters. With friends and helpers also spawning to help you out, this is a last-as-long-as-you-can affair which sadly does get quite old rather quickly. Secondly, there is Escape mode which is effectively an endless runner which has slightly higher replay value but not much.   

CONCLUSION

Bardbarian is another iOS game ported to PC that should not be ill-thought of. It might not stay on the hard-drive for long but for a casual lift, it supplies a perfectly adequate source of entertainment. Not mentioned above are three special abilities plus a knock-back attack which your bard activates at the cost of musical notes and at the touch of one of the four coloured buttons. Additionally, there are shops lining the northern boundary that dish out different kinds of help that get more powerful as you add on more town upgrades. One minor criticism I have is that for a fairly light download and an iOS port I was surprised to see a little stutter and a small hit to the framerate on occasions. Otherwise this is a solid arcade-style title.