Our Review of Splody

Splody is a new age Bomberman-esque game from developer Dashing Strike, also published by Dashing Strike, for Steam.  The game’s description is best from the devs themselves.

 ‘The classic couch competitive gameplay of games like “Bomberman” brought into the modern era. Place bombs, get out of the way, destroy your friends, collect powerups, ‘splode your way to victory in a variety of game modes adapted for smooth multiplayer with virtually unlimited local players! With no original Bomberman US PC release this millennium, and only a couple low quality Bomberman-like games on Steam, players are excited for Splody. Local multiplayer games for 8 or more people is a personal passion of Dashing Strike founder Jimb Esser, and there is a significant lack of these out there. Splody started as an open-source, free, local multiplayer game (“BBE”, primarily created by Jimb, a decade ago), and over the past year has been expanded with online multiplayer and polished to professional quality.

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The features within this game are aplenty!  Check it.

• ‘Online multiplayer
• Host your own custom online game, or just jump in to a public game to quickly get into the action
• As many local players as you can connect controllers for (4-20 recommended)
• Play against bots to practice or fill in a game
• Level editor, share custom levels
• Various game modes and settings including “Capture the Dino” – Fight over control for a mount in this game mode which keeps all players respawning and in the action until the end of the match, Free for all or Teams, Special levels with different behaviors
• Even in the “classic” game mode, with post-mortem “orbital bombers,” players can affect the game after they are defeated, so no one gets bored between matches’
• With post-mortem “orbital bombers,” players can affect the game after they are defeated, so no one gets bored between matches
• Performance on low-end hardware, and snappy online multiplayer even on high-latency connections with players from around the world

Below is the trailer for this bombastic video game now available on Steam.

Audio:  Simply put, the sound effects in this game can be frequent.  However, the way Dashing Strike did the sound effects and the volume control were so fantastic.  You have a lot of control over the aspects of it.  If you love it, crank it up!  If you find it aggravating while trying to focus on the game, kill it.  But ultimately, it doesn’t do what most games do where it’s already defaulted to the highest setting.  The setting is at 50% and you decide if it’s a nice balance for you or not.  But I really suggest you play at least a few hours with the sound effects on as they add so much more depth to the game and they sound oh so clean. 10/10

Soundtrack:  There’s not a whole lot of separate tracks within Splody.  But that’s really okay with a game like this.  You have this simplistic formula of fitting music against the sound effects of your friends or bots exploding that is absolutely satisfying. I would implore Dashing Strike to maybe have a way to have a custom soundtracks feature in the game.  There are some people who are going to play this game for hundreds of hours and not walk away from it and I think that they should be granted the freedom to maybe not hear the same songs for hundreds of hours.  But other than that, if you’re just playing the game for a week or so, or maybe every so often with friends, you will enjoy the music.  7/10

Visuals:  Let’s cut to the chase.  You can tell by the screenshots and gameplay trailer that this game is very low on the graphic intensity scale.  They kept it lightweight so that the framerate issues were slim to nill and that it could be ran on nearly every computer still in existence (running Windows 7 or higher).  You can still make out the pictures on the flat powerup markers.  You can still see details on their costumes.  All of the basics are there, there was really no need to have fully 3D rendered settings and full 3D characters.  It’s cute,simple, and get’s the job done! 10/10

Gameplay:  I mean this is pretty cut and dry too.  It’s Bomberman at it’s core, but with different power ups and a dinosaur that you can mount if you find it in the map.  I need you to read that last sentence again, because it’s true and it’s real.  The dinosaur speeds up your movement and can take one hit for you from a bomb.  The power ups are fun and tweaked to be different from your conventional Bomberman.  The speed in the game almost feels more fluid in essence too.  Like I just felt like when possible, I could just keep floating around the map without stopping.  My favorite thing about any game, by the way, is when there are bots so that you can practice, or just relax and be away from humans or not have to worry about an internet connection to play against said humans.  This game lets you add as many bots as actual humans so that you get the full effect.  The problem with the whole game, which is 100% my own opinion, is that I am horrible at Bomberman, which translated to this game too.  But I do feel that it is far more worth it to spend your money on this as it better than the official Bomberman iterations that I’ve played, so I’m going to give it a 7/10.

Replay-ability:  This game is nothing but replay-ability.  It’s an arcade game in essence.  You never have to worry about cutscenes or storyline or any of that nonsense.  You just have a straight game with NOTHING but endless gameplay.  Hell, you even have a Debug Mode in the game that you can play with, if the original game doesn’t quite tickle your fancy. 10/10

The link for the game is here on it’s Steam page for the low,low cost of $6.99.

 Lastly, here are the system requirements for those who can’t believe that it can really, truly run on their low end, outdated system.

‘MINIMUM: