Murderhorn review
3

I'm a fan of short, thematic games; I appreciate it when a developer knows how to evoke their mood or make their point without wasting the player's time. And this certainly has the setup for that -- especially with the news ticker, which is easily the best part of the experience.

That said, I'm going to take the rare-for-me step of saying this game is too short. Perhaps that's just because the few upgrades available (there's about 20 levels of a half-dozen boosts, total) all either radically alter the feel of the game or feel like they do nothing; progression is speedy but very erratic. As a result, the theme suffers -- rather than a mountain slowly deciding to escalate its fight back against increasing human encroachment, the tourists go from trickle to flood at a moment's notice and then you start mowing them down and they're back to a trickle again.

Basically, for a game thematically about slow escalation (its protagonist is a mountain! How much slower can you get?), it really lacks continuity. It would make its point more strongly if there were more of a feel of getting gradually overwhelmed and then making equally gradual progress in reclamation. Given that doubling the game's play time would take it from 5 minutes to 10, it can afford to slow down and breathe.

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