Blood Alloy: Reborn from Suppressive Fire Games is an arena-style platform shooter with a 16-bit aesthetic. It promises fast-paced gameplay, fully traversable terrain, swarms of enemies, and an awesome soundtrack. And, for what it's worth, it delivers on at least some of those things. But overall, the game is a weird, messy thing. It's an arena shooter that behaves like it's a platformer, a game that requires more precision than either the controls or the game type allows for. But even if this were all, its flaws far outweigh its strengths, and the game ultimately falters in spite of itself. But more, as always, below.
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I just trashed a city's infrastructure for the mob.
I was totally justified in doing so. My character was serving the Commercium, the entirely unscrupulous merchant's guild who runs the trading quarters in every major city. They plot and conspire all over the place to topple the ruling houses in the cities where they work, and they're pretty much the closest thing this world has to the mob. So now, because of me, they control the city's military as it descends into lawlessness, and they could probably take over whenever they like. The scary part is, that's probably not even the nastiest thing I'll do this playthrough.
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This game has broken me
I've tried every possible angle of attack, from sarcastically framing it as the perfect game for the "offended set" to long pontifications on exactly why this game was made and managed to be released through Steam when it's clearly a quarter of a game. But in the end, I keep coming back to the person whose words have impacted my life far more than anyone's should have, especially his: Roger Ebert.
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Sometimes, a game doesn't need to be complicated or big to be interesting
Sometimes, a game can just be odd black and white scratch art and a way to bring its concept to fruition by forcing everything in its world to try and kill you. Sometimes being as simple or as basic as a flash game forces you to look at the game, try to see what it says, and apply those things outward.
Sometimes, a game's just beautifully dark.
All these things are Sym.
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