REVIEW: Death By Game Show
Tower Defense games are all about quick decisions and avoiding damage, and Oointah’s Death By Game Show takes those concepts and creates a high speed, think on your toes style challenge. The challenges may be short and sweet, but the difficulty spike may be too relentless for some players, no matter how funny the game may be.
It is some point in the 26th century and the world seems to be overrun by robots. As a punishment for being too smart for the human race you are sentenced to Death by Game Show.
You control U.H. Wutt, a pudgy little fellow with a mechanical arm, which is used to snag coins that are dropped as you massacre droids and destroy enemy structures. You start off each challenge by being transported to a planet where you must fend off killer robots until you have collected enough money or destroyed enough enemies before the timer runs out. Once these goals have been completed, the rocket will land and you will be briefly transported back to safety before being shipped off for the next challenge.
During each challenge you traverse a small section of the planet in a side-scrolling fashion and defend yourself against waves of enemies. Death By Gameshow plays very much like a tower defense game, but with a much more fast paced tempo, as you’re forced to react quickly in such a small area to work with. Enemy robots come in waves by foot and/or by air, and you have limited droids that you can spawn throughout the duration of the challenge. You have a wide variety of droids to help you survive, and these droids are spawned by your robot companion named G.I.M.P., that is chained to you during each challenge. If you think spam-spawning a small army is your key to victory, think again, since G.I.M.P. can only produce a limited amount of droids in a small time span. If you overexert G.I.M.P. he will collapse like a sack of potatoes and will slow your movement down making you susceptible to being slaughtered by enemy robots. As you progress through the challenges you will unlock more droids and buildings that will take some of the pressure off and bide time for your companions energy level to recharge.
There are 50 game show challenges in total, and the difficulty of the challenges ramps up awfully quick. To make matters worse, poor U.H. Wutt is extremely squishy and usually cannot survive more than one robot attack before being shipped off on a stretcher and failing the challenge. This is unfortunately the downfall for Death By Game Show, as the challenges soon become frustrating and may make you stop playing the game for a while.
A huge part of Death By Gameshow is its humor. Oointah has stated that one of their inspirations for the game was Mike Judge’s Idiocracy, and there are plenty of other pop culture references embedded within Death By Game Show. This makes the game’s humor hit-and-miss, since you’d have to be a movie buff or a fan of Mike Judge’s work to find the game’s shtick entertaining.
Death By Game Show has a unique, almost cartoonish art style that’s pleasing to the eye. The robot and droid designs are really well done, it just may take a while to get a good glimpse of them since the screen can get so chaotic with explosions and blood.
Death By Game Show is a funny, yet sometimes frustrating tower defense style game that you’ll either love or hate. The fast paced gameplay and unique visual style is something to be admired, although it can seem like your screen is cluttered at times. If you can be patient with the difficulty spike and appreciate the humor, then Death By Game Show just may be the game for you.
Death By Game Show review code was provided by Oointah
