10 Tons Twin-Stick Triple Steam Review (plus one more!)

This review represents about 80 tons of games. That’s quick mafs.

So I lumped these particular games together because they’re all twin-stick shooters from the same developers and/or publisher. And they represent an interesting progression, from a game design and publishing standpoint. They share some common elements, and it’s a great example of how to build upon previous successes. Somehow, they manage to include a few “what not to do” things, from my standpoint, some unrelated to gameplay.

Crimsonland seems to be their earliest work in this area. In comparison to the other games, it’s pretty spartan. But it gets the job done. Everything is tiny, there are no obstacles or walls. The playfield is basically a desert, or dirt, and slightly larger than the screen. No walls, no bases, nothing like that. Just you and enemies. It is detailed, for what it offers, You leave tiny footprints everywhere you go. And, true to the name, great splotches of blood and bones. This is all done in top-down 2.5D style. I guess it more or less qualifies as pixelart, but not really. Everything is just small.

There are a wide variety of enemies, I haven’t encountered them all yet, still playing it on the first available level of difficulty, which requires you to beat the game in full before starting out on a more difficult challenge. Zombies, spiders, other…things. Each have their own characteristics, so it’s not just cosmetic. A later level includes spiders than split into two smaller spiders each time you kill one, iterating several times, until you’ve shot yourself into a screen full of them. They don’t kill you on contact, though, instead inflicting some damage each time you touch one. Get overwhelmed, of course, and you’re dead.

If it sounds simplistic, it is. But I’ve played this one the most out of the three so far. It works well and shows the promise the dev team had early on.

Adding a lot to my interest in playing it, they’ve included a ridiculous number of perks (powerups) and weapons, as well as including an achievement system. It’s addictive and varied. The weapons all have unique characteristics. The perk system can award you whatever you pick up via a token, and the gameplay often gives you a choice between multiple options, letting you tune your gameplay to the specific situation encountered. It’s very polished for such a small game. Well done.

Later rounds introduce little generators that constantly make new enemies and destroying them becomes an important factor. Let them go long enough and you’re faced with an impossible number of things to fend off. It’s also done with a fair amount of humor and good writing, and that’s always a plus with me. Not laugh out loud funny, but interesting and humorous.

Is Crimsonland a good game? Yes.

Is it a great game?

Also yes.

If I had to level any criticism here, and being an erstwhile critic, I suppose I do have to, Crimsonland starts out slow. Literally slow. It can feel bogged down, playing on the introductory levels, until you grab a speed powerup. But this is by design. Later levels wouldn’t feel as fast, otherwise. It lets you plan and strategize a bit, rather than run around in a mad dash shooting without thought. This is, of course, rectified by playing in a more advanced mode. But by forcing people to play through at a lower/slower difficulty initially, I can see this turning a few people off, who want fast action from the start. It probably would have been better to let veteran players access the harder settings from the start.

The first two worlds, divided into sub-levels, are also fairly easy. Only once or twice was I overwhelmed before I reached the end of the second set. At which point, it gets hard enough that some sub-levels require a few attempts. It’s a balance, and they’ve more or less pulled it off, playing it in the longer term. It probably could have ramped up the challenges a bit earlier. The first two worlds mostly serve to introduce the new enemies and allow you to unlock weapons and perks.

Like the weapons, the perks have a lot of variety. More than the weapons, even, with all sorts of add-ons. My own favorites generate additional perks, or cause the perk tokens to gravitate toward you out of a crowd of enemies. There’s a lot of thought behind this overall system.

Oh, my only actual criticism toward this game, and Ten Ton in general, is the Doom knock-off cover art. Just bad form, I feel, even for a group of budding indie game designers. The game stands on its own, and shouldn’t be invoking a more established franchise that furthermore doesn’t even have much at all to do with this one in terms of gamplay. Plus it’s just kind of gauche and low-class to do.

 

Crimsonland, it appears, begat the amazing Tesla Vs.Lovecraft.

I’ve wanted this one for a few years, since I saw a video of being run on the PS4, so I jumped on it as soon as I found it was on Steam. Not before getting its own sequel, though. But I’m getting ahead of myself, here.

Take all of the good bits from Crimsonland, remove any niggling bad things, and then make everything 10x better. That’s Tesla vs. Lovecraft in a nutshell.

Gorgeous. Enthralling. Challenging. I can’t say enough good things about this one. From the intriguing premise to the multi-dimensional maps, this game keeps on giving. Staring with the random quotes from the protagonists on the intro screen, Tesla vs. Lovecraft is about loving attention to detail.

The maps are medium-sized scrollers with plenty of obstacles, a huge departure from Crimsonland’s stark playing fields. The steampunk background graphics are lushly drawn. Bits of the levels are destructible, which makes each section play differently as it progresses. The integrated Tesla and Lovecraft mythos really ties the room together, dude.

One of the gameplay mechanics is a Tesla Warp that moves you forward a few yards. Helpful when you’re getting overwhelmed, it also allows you to pass through some barriers and fences and is integral to your overall strategy. And you will be overwhelmed. It’s considerably tougher than Crimsonland from the start.

You start off in a Tesla mech, with insane firepower. Fun, you say, and begin blasting everything around you to bits. But, unstable tech as it is, that lasts about fifteen seconds or so before exploding, leaving you vulnerable to attack. The suit can be reassembled by finding the various pieces scattered about, giving you another boost of firepower and invulnerability.

There are weapons scattered about, of course, and these are also necessary if you want to advance. Combine these with the perk system, and the game stays interesting, round after round. Actually, it gets more interesting as you advance. Enemies, weapons, and perks are all slowly added level by level, so the more you play, the more involved everything gets.

I can’t tell you exactly what all of these artifacts and perks do, at this point, I just know you need them. Play a level long enough and you’ll come across a nuke, which destroys everything in the surrounding area. Without these, progressing would be almost impossible. There are plenty of portals scattered about that keep generating new enemies, with no way to destroy them.

But run and gun long enough, and Cthulu appears. I prefer to think of it as a junior Cthulu. They’re the size of a monument or something, and can be eliminated with 30-50 shots or so, ending the round. I daresay you’re not going to do that with the actual chaos god.

There’s a map system for the levels, and it intriguingly holds three layers of gameplay. While it’s unfortunate, I guess, that some of them are DLC, it does give you something to acquire after you eventually beat the primary map. Or perhaps they are unlockable as well, it’s too soon to tell, for me. With the way everything builds up level by level, I expect there will be great new additions to the story and bigger boss-type battles in my future.

It's all very polished and engrossing, and I can’t recommend it enough.

 

Tesla Vs. Lovecraft leads us to Tesla Force.

I have read comments from people online complaining that Tesla Force is just more Tesla vs. Lovecraft. Like that’s a bad thing. In fact, it’s in many ways an improvement. There are now four playable characters, with women (Marie Curie and Mary Shelley) included this time around. Portals can now be destroyed if you manage to stay within its boundaries long enough. There’s more storyline involved with this one. There’s even more depth to the playfields, although it’s merely an added graphical element.

The cutscene art has changed in style a bit, but both games are excellently crafted as far as that goes. I do wish the theme song had changed, because playing both extensively makes me appreciate it a tiny bit less.

One thing I don’t like about it as much is that you now have to actively press a button to pick up a new weapon. This can be hard to do in the heat of the moment. It’s a very Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4 change that I don’t agree with. It does stop you from changing weapons when you don’t want to, but I definitely prefer the mechanic of Tesla Vs. Lovecraft in this area. I’d say it’s a minor point, but it’s really not, seeing how important weapons are to the game. Given more time under my belt with it, I’ll probably get used to the change.

Otherwise, it’s a great sequel to a great game. Something else I’ll say about all three games is that it thoughtfully gives you the option to autofire with the right stick, or use it to aim and then fire with a trigger switch. When I first played, it defaulted to the trigger, so I was pleasantly surprised to find the other option, and never looked back. Overall, this is a more complex and involved version of an already great game.

Finally, I’ll add that there is a very good bundle on Steam that will net you both Tesla games and some DLC, and at a great price, as well. It’s probably your best bet if you enjoy this sort of game. I’m looking forward to playing these on a big screen instead of my meager laptop…

 

But wait, there’s more!

I also picked yet another twin-stick game from 10-Tons. I won’t fault Jydge for being a thinly disguised Judge Dredd game, though, because there aren’t many good Judge Dredd games. Are there any at all? I can only remember a fairly lame platform shooter game, and that was thirty years ago.

This one’s a bit different than the others. A twin-stick shooter, sure, but with enough differences to put this one in another class entirely. Rather than just blasting and running, you’re given tasks like recusing hostages. Hostages that die if you shoot them. Or shoot the explosives around them. You’re likely to fail the first few rounds until you adapt to the semi-stealth tactics. Which is an odd approach for a Judge Dredd style character, but it works. Another mechanic that took some getting used to was that it is slightly more realistic in the way you aim. You can walk backwards while shooting, which is sort of a crucial feature of twin-stick games, but you have to take aim first, and then start backing up. It makes sense, although it’s a bit off-putting to learn in the heat of your first rounds.

While it’s not as lush as the Tesla games, it’s all very well-drawn, with lots of detail. There’s a bigger emphasis on ambient lighting, here, and that adds to the feel as well as being part of the level design. Or so I recall. I’m still joystick-deep in Tesla Vs. Lovecraft at the moment. Check this one out if you want a tiny bit more strategy than just running and blindly firing. I look forward to spending more time with this one once I beat the others.

Ten Tons is shaping up to be one of my favorite game houses of late, and I'm interested in seeing what else they have on offer. 

Ten Tons Ltd. website.