Indie Arcade: Enterchained

4/1/2015

Two Enter.....

Welcome to another edition of Indie Arcade! For the month of April, I take a look at an awesome Indie game with a very unique game mechanic. The name of this action packed indie is Enterchained.

Premise

Enterchained is a game where the player takes control of a warrior in a coliseum. They are chained to another warrior (Either an Ai or human Co-Op partner).

The player/s must face off against waves of enemies. They must work together to keep each other alive, the biggest catch is that they are chained together!

The chain that holds the players together will limit their movement, forcing them to work with their partner. However the chain is not only a limitation, it can be strategically used to trip enemies, leaving them vulnerable for a few seconds.

Art and Design

The game looks dark and bland at first, but color is sprinkled about the world with purpose. Enemies wear golden armor, blood spills out from your defeated foes and the loot you unlock is color coded according to rarity and usefulness (Green/Common, Blue/Rare and Gold for Epic).

Enemies come in a wide variety. You have your standard fodder type and your more specialized gladiators. Enemies that swing their swords quickly, deflecting your attacks, Giants that can flatten anything that gets in their way with a single swipe of their sword.

Enemies take one hit from your sword to go "down". Once they are in the down state they must be executed by walking up to them and mashing the B button.

Players must be wary of being executed themselves. All it takes is one hit from an enemy to be downed. If a player goes down they need their partner to rescue them before they are killed. If both players are downed and executed the game is over.

Cons

At the time of writing this I have played quite a few rounds solo, just me and the Ai controlled co-op partner. I have no complaints about the Ai, they were able to get me out of many near death situations and was generally very helpful.

The only real complaint I have, and it wasn't a frequent issue was that sometimes when there is too much going on onscreen, it can be hard to tell what button you need to press. For example, My Ai partner got downed and I was trying to hit the attack button to prevent the enemy from executing my partner. The only issue was that there was so many enemies downed on screen, I could not see what button I was supposed to press.

Now, you might be thinking "Why not just hit the attack button?", well the problem was that so many enemies were on the screen, I couldn't even see where I was or the onscreen button prompt. It turns out I was mid execution of an enemy. I was trying to hit the attack button (A on the controller) but I needed to finish executing the enemy (B) in order to become unlocked from the execution position so that I may save my partner.

This resulted in me losing my Ai partner and then being executed myself. This has only happened a few times while playing, but it can be a bit frustrating. This was the only issue I ran into while playing the game.

Are You Not Enterchained?

Enterchained is one of the best action co-op games I played. It is simple fast paced action with an interesting game mechanic. I had a lot fun with this game and was genuinely impressed with it's art and gameplay.

Now it is your turn to enter the arena and claim your glory!