A Survivor Game With Imaginative Structure
Expect more dev studios to do what Dark Point Games has done here. They had an action-RPG already, boxed up and in the marketplace, in the form of Achilles: Legends Untold. So, they borrowed the models and world from that game, automated all of the attacks, made the enemy hordes infinite and Bob’s Your Vampire Uncle: they had a survivor game. Then they slapped £5.79 on it, as an acknowledgment of how cheap the whole process was, and boom.
For all the reasons mentioned, Achilles: Survivor could very easily have been throwaway. But it’s testament to the devs that they’ve tried something new. There’s some big ideas at play here.
Building A Survivor Clone
When you think of Achilles, what comes to mind? The tendons on your foot? Very droll. Well, when we think of the person Achilles, we think of Brad Pitt in Troy, the famous spot in the foot where he was shot, a near-invincible warrior, and a penchant for stabbing things with a spear. I’m sure historians will have more in their list, but pfft.
What we didn’t think of was building stuff. Yep, Achilles loves to construct workshops, spike traps and altars to Zeus. Because in Achilles: Survivor, there is the ability to trundle over to hotspots and choose from three randomised constructions. If Achilles wants a place to heal, then he’ll build a barrel. If he wants to cover the floor in spikes, he’ll build a spike trap. If he wants some troops following him about, he’ll build a Trojan Horse (wait, maybe he does have a tenuous connection to building stuff!). There are plenty of others.
Okay, so while Achilles wasn’t a celebrated carpenter, and the building stuff comes a little out of leftfield, it makes for a brilliant riff on the traditional survivor game. You’ve now got a few more options than ‘stand your ground’ or ‘run away’. Building a barrel means a potential camping spot, as you continuously heal up as you attack. A workshop allows you to purchase upgrades with all that gold you’ve been accumulating, which means – at least in our case – a loop, as we would head out to gain gold, wait for the shop to refresh, and then head back for the gains.
Very broadly, these structures can attack even when you’re not present, so you can gather the resulting rewards. They apply passive boosts, so the choice of what to build isn’t solely about their immediate benefits. And they get attacked, too, so it’s worth keeping an eye on the minimap to judge whether one needs to be protected.
In short, constructions are Achilles: Survivor’s strongest spot. It’s the opposite of an Achilles’ Heel. Hercules’s Bicep? That’ll do.
If there’s a downside to the inclusion of these tower-defense-style towers, it’s that they’re so interesting and innovative that there’s a tinge of disappointment with everything else. There aren’t any other ideas that are near the scale of constructions.
The Heel-Turn
While the rest isn’t innovative, it’s not to say that the rest of Achilles: Survivor is poor. Far from it. This is a highly competent survivor-clone in a rather lovely wrapper.
Achilles: Survivor has the entirety of Greek Mythology to draw from, and draw from it it does. There are ten characters, ranging from the well-known and human (Achilles, Hector, Agamemnon) to the slightly-well-known and not-so-human (Prometheus, Tantalus, Alectryon the God of Chickens). They’re all brilliantly varied, not only because the cyclopes and spiders are frigging huge and incapable of squeezing through tiny gaps in enemy waves. They also come with stat differences and a unique attack. Each character also slots into a class – enchanters, warriors and the like – which means you can make progress across a wide band of characters without necessarily playing them.
Then there are the enemies. On the common side it’s all very Harryhausen: there are skeletons, scorpions, cyclopes and wolves. The minibosses are more fun, dabbling in colossi that fill the screen (and give you bugger-all time to escape their stomps), carnivorous plants and more. But things aren’t perfect here: the common enemies really don’t vary anywhere near as much as they should, and precious few enemies demand a change in the way you think. We’ve mentioned the two best and most interesting minibosses, but the others are roughly interchangeable.
It’s a similar sentiment to the levels. While you’re moving from Troy to Greece Coastline to Dungeons, the arenas don’t feel very different. I think of Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor and how the environment can be a boon or a bastard, depending on how you use it. Here, the biome is just a backdrop for more killing, and that’s whether they look different from each other at all. When progression is tied to unlocking new levels, it can leave things feeling empty.
Dress To Progress
It’s a hiccup to what is a compelling progression system. The levels have three different sub-objectives attached, and you’re going to need to fulfil them if you want to progress. They get you playing differently, trying new tactics and upgrades. Meta-resources allow you to build a better character at a general level and a per-class level. And there are masteries on the individual characters, garnering new upgrades, moves and yet more characters. While it doesn’t have the breadth of a Vampire Survivors, say, it’s more than enough for thirty hours of play before the fatigue hits. Not bad for £5.79.
While Achilles: Survivor has weak points (it’s that ankle again), namely in enemy and level variety, it’s also a survivor-clone with a single, glorious idea at its centre: what if you could build towers to help you out as you gallivant about? That idea alone makes Achilles: Survivor worth a stab.
Important Links
The Man, The Myth, The Legend – Achilles: Survivor Releases on PC & Console – https://www.thexboxhub.com/the-man-the-myth-the-legend-achilles-survivor-releases-on-pc-console/
Achilles: Survivor Brings Mythical Bullet Heaven Action to Xbox and Consoles with Full 1.0 Launch | Release Date Confirmed – https://www.thexboxhub.com/achilles-survivor-brings-mythical-bullet-heaven-action-to-xbox-and-consoles-with-full-1-0-launch/
Buy from the Xbox Store – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/achilles-survivor/9pjx76zhxrkj
