Blood of the Werewolf Review

Scientifically Proven’s new indie platformer title Blood of the Werewolf, was released on Steam just in time for the Halloween sales, and I personally couldn’t have thought of a better way to get my blood boiling in rage and frustration than playing (or attempting to play) through this game. Although to my surprise, it managed to keep me hooked and fixated since its debut, and I’m about to tell you why.

The vast majority of current platformer games with a story result in the long-awaited rescue of a loved one or final defeat of an arch-enemy, and this theory is true for Blood of the Werewolf. You play as protagonist Selena or her alter ego the Werewolf, depending on the current daylight situation, and are tasked with retrieving your stolen child. Sounds simple enough right? It isn’t, and this is what makes your adventure with Selena so enjoyable.

Blood of the Werewolf is more than just your average heart-warming storyline. As levels become more challenging, both Selena and the Werewolf earn abilities along the way. These include new upgrades, attacks, powers, and are just another contributing element that encourage you to play further each time. Abilities you have earned are presented in what looks like a trophy system, always accessible in-game just by pressing your backspace key. 

This moves me on to controls. As suspected you move back and forth by tapping your A and D keys, jumping requires the W key, and holding it down allows you to jump higher when you are playing as Selena. Jumping across levels is somewhat different when in Werewolf form, as double tapping W will perform a double jump, so remembering which sequence of keys to use depending on your character can be a mission in itself.

Climbing and holding onto ladders is a common occurrence in the game, and for this you’ll need to use shift combined with W or S to go up or down ladders, the same keys are also used for holding onto them, preventing you from falling into the green acid or shark-infested waters. Familiarising yourself with these keys to swing between ladders is a challenge at first, but after a few levels you begin to feel like a multi-tasking champion, seamlessly gliding from one end to another. Until you have to pair this with attacking monsters, of course.

 Whilst in human form, you attack enemies with your bow and arrow simply by clicking on the opponent, as instead of your cursor being a plain white arrow, it is now a target. Using your left mouse button performs your basic attack, while your right mouse button allows you to shoot multiple arrows, giving you a better chance of pinning down one of those infuriatingly fast bats that like to hover around each level.  The same applies for the Werewolf, though obviously she specialises in swiping enemies to death, or using his ‘Dash Power’ to speedily rip through monsters. (Although seeing a Werewolf wield a bow and arrow would have been a funnier twist on the game).

After completing each level, your best time will automatically be entered into a leaderboard, so you can see how you performed against other players. In-game achievements are earnable by finishing the level in the best time that you can, and for those like me who aren’t that speedy, you can earn achievements by doing other things around the levels, for example: killing X amount of monsters in a certain time. 

As previously mentioned, the levels do become difficult very quickly, and although monsters are easy enough to kill, when there are a multitude of them firing bombs at you whilst trying to navigate yourself around crumbling platforms, you’ll find yourself restarting sections more than once. For me this was the only element that distracted from the story of the game, after a while the aim of the game sways from the main plot, to desperately avoiding monsters in order to finally complete the level.

The soundtrack used in game, although extremely fitting, makes these situations all the more intense. The graphics and visuals are finely tuned with the gothic setting of this title, this even includes details as small as the title screens of each new level, which are a brief black and white video in the theme of an old horror movie. Everything ranging from the look of this game to the profanities you’ll be swearing at your computer mid-way through make it the perfect platformer to be playing during the Halloween week, don’t miss the chance to pick it up in the Steam sales right now.