izigame.me

Blood roots is a rooting tooting rhythm centered blood bath, cracking skulls and moving fast, going with the flow and never looking back. It’s a Western theme’d hotline miami with a ton of weapon variety. The entire point of the game is to move swiftly and use anything as a weapon. From boots to wheels, bodies to knives, fishes and foods, literally anything you can get your revenge driven hands on. It’s fast pace and you only get one hit, it’s fun, it’s brutal and it was a pleasure to play.
Being able to use EVERYTHING as a weapon is such a great gimmick, so many different variables, patterns, movements. So much love and care went into the tight item placement of the levels. The way you can effortless juggle an entire areas worth of enemies on a handful of kitchen items is so refreshing.
The game gently pushes you into a certain lane that makes the smoothest killing sprees possible but you can escape the flow and trail off and make a different game plan, honestly i don’t recommend it. This game isn’t about instincts. I know, crazy, on the surface, that initial rip through hordes of poor souls caught up in a whirlwind of anger in the beginning is fantastic don’t get me wrong!
The early game is all instincts fast twitch based plays. You’re allowed to be messy and chaotic. It’s pure chaos rolling around on a barrel and flinging it into 12 other enemies before twirling a tiki torch to properly ignite some poor cohorts.
By act 3 we’re in a whole other playing field where we’re depending on tempos, pick up times, knowing animation lengths, learning layouts to rather large levels in the end game while keeping new weapon additions pouring in per arena. It takes all of those surface elements, reinforces them and then doubles down on you as a player to step up under the pressure of increasing difficulty.
One hit point is normally something i associate with ANGER, UNFAIR, BULLSHIT. Thankfully being punished for dying isn’t a thing, not a single time did I ever felt like I wasted a second running back into an arena after a quick misstep. Even those last moment missteps where you were overconfident still doesn’t make me angry, it makes me want to make the run even smoother. Auto saves are constant and you’ll be stuck in an arena for around 5 minutes, consistently dying, trying to learn the rhythm of the fight before executing it to perfection and moving onward.
You feel unstoppable when you get into that flow state, and if you do get stuck on a certain scene it feels oh so rewarding when you finish it, you didn’t get lucky, you conquered or mastered that zone. the game goes on but it never lets up. One scene to the next you’ll either pass through like a breeze or hit that brick wall, and let me tell you it stands tall.
Certain scenes require playing perfectly which to some might be irritating but personally for me I enjoyed just how precise you have to be on those rougher levels. Still i never found any single fight unfair in the entire game, there is no bullshit. You either KILL the guy or FAIL. You either didn’t aim right or you missed your prompts for picking up a weapon during your frantic rush. There are no unfair deaths, it’s entirely get good, and that in itself is a good thing. This game is the epitome of just one more try. Every time I lost I came back with a better gameplan ready to absolutely destroy the arena. The maps are shorts and the early game has a bit of a difficulty curve that I actually really enjoyed.
Boss fights are surprisingly easy, they show that you’ve mastered a zone. You’re slipping and sliding, reading the bosses movements and attack patterns. By the time you beat a boss you feel that you’ve truly mastered the fight. They have perfectly placed checkpoints mid boss fight so you’re never pushed too far back, leaving out all of the frustration that i associate with the souls games. You cannot tell me running back to a boss fight is good game design and i’m sooo glad you’re not forced to endure a punishing failure. It’s all about learning the telegraphs and figuring out which little gap you’re supposed to fill. At its core blood roots is a rhythm game.
The art style remind me of guacameele. It’s simplistic and gets its point across without being offensive. Its simplistic look is pleasing while still never keeping you from being lost in the environment while zipping and blitzing around, which is a really great choice.
the mayhem and chaos feeds into itself, in a 10 second span you’ll burn through 12 enemies with 9 different weapons. For an example you’ll be dashing and slashing into an enemy, then taking his body and throwing it at the next opponent, then jumping onto a cart, rolling over multiple enemies and then using that cart’s wheel to bounce across another two bodies. picking up a rifle blowing away an enemy from a far range before grabbing a carrot, a chair, a torch and finally rolling on a barrel and barreling into a group of enemies with a massive explosion wiping out the rest of a party…. (gasping for breath) The juggling feels as good as it sounds, you feel badass, confident and it’s just so so so much fun.
The plot is a classic revenge story of hunting down your old crew, it’s hacky, surface level and a fun little bonus to the intense, engaging gameplay. I found myself interested enough to care for the story but really it isn’t anything special. The game has three acts with three different villains all bent on you not bringing up the past. For a game that took me around 4hours to beat it packed in a lot of cutscenes and dialogue. It kept me engaged and ready for the next plot beat the whole way through.
Blood roots was just a random game I found with a tiny audience. The game deserves to be recognized as an actual game worth merit, and even more so worth paying at full price. take this game out of the shadows and bring it into the light because after a closer look you won’t be able to put it down until you’re laying dead on the ground.
If you played Ruiner or Hotline Miami you’ll love this!