Read Wargaming and the thought flies, indeed sferraglia, rusty fights between tanks. If you are a little more romantic you think of the devastating bordered between battleships at sunset. Without forgetting the chivalrous aerial combat in the skies over Europe. Here, forget about all of this. Pagan Online, developed for the publishers of belarus, by the serbs of Belgrade, Mad Head Games, is the exact opposite. It’s a hack’n’slash that superficially and trivially, we could define the Diablo and that takes a direction and a course in some ways completely different. Its genesis is all the more special. Mad Head Games has a resume of all respect. In casual games, however. Award-winning filmmakers of the games of the genre “hidden objects”, that is the real and true treasure hunts, a screen fixed, a puzzle game where you must find hidden objects within a room. The passage to Pagan Online was dictated by the desire to do something different, because as we were told in the venue of the presentation, the casual games have made them what they are, but the desire to do anything else, a game of “true” was so great. And so we started working on the new project. The green light definitive, and indeed the incentive to close the project was when the “casting” of Wargaming in search of products to produce to diversify their portfolio of games has chosen the Pagan Online.

Something differentThe setting is that of the slavic mythology, where the nine chosen ones with unique weapons and abilities, they must fight against the dark forces that have taken possession of the Land after the abandonment Of the gods. A beginning all in all a classic, but with a gameplay very different from the more typical hack’n slash your way to (trivially) Diablo 3. The first thing you notice is that the control system and the combat is not what we see click a mouse button to move. The producer of the game, texan Jacob Beucler has defined a twin stick shooter, and once set your hands on keyboard and mouse, we can confirm his statement. The impact initially is a thread of the disconcerting: the keys W A S and D move the character, while the arrow that appears on the screen, it simply serves to aim. The different mobility of the hero is something to keep in mind: no point and click, but something more “physical,” which refers us directly to games action all round. Each hero is equipped with seven abilities, which is conveniently mapped on the mouse and keys like E, Q, R, and Shift. Skills that define of course the combat style, and then the one that, trivially, we could define the class. For our tests, a build for nothing immature from a technological point of view (a cartoonish and colorful but modest, Unreal Engine used for the beta ended it was possible to choose between the characters: the berserker Kingewitch, the tank Istok and the sorceress, of course, paid in attacks by the distance to Anya. We have chosen the first, a middle path between the remaining two. Another big difference with the games to Diablo is that the heroes are not all available immediately, but must be unlocked by spending the flakes of blood that are released during the clashes. There is a precise number still needed: the dreaded “90” seen in our tried, we have been assured to be completely busted. The idea is that a handful of hours will serve to unlock one. Also because in little more than two hours of play we found only two, and two different heroes…

Pay first, get everythingBut the other big difference that puts Pagan in an Online “league” is different compared to Diablo or Path of Exile is the game-structure. Let’s clarify from the start that the game will be sold at full price (now we do not know which), so not a free-to-play and will not be plagued by microtransactions. Mad Head Games has structured its product around a campaign, missions and assassinations. Three mode of the game which is accessed from the Pantheon, a real central hub where you can interact with other players you will have access to the forge for crafting, the enhancement of skills and the creation of combos, this function is still mysterious and not experienced in the build tested. So much of the campaign with a strong component of the narrative, divided into eight acts that the other two modes offer dozens of short-term missions that end all with the kill a boss and several consecutive waves of enemies after you have explored and cleared of a particular area. Our test has seen us play for no more than fifteen or twenty minutes, with the clock stopped even before in the case of the missions, properly so called, and of the murders. But we have completed so many. A structure of this kind, much more slender and agile of the long dungeon of the classics of the genre, should be seen in view of the planned and necessary repetition of the whole, where short, brutal and action-packed battles go play more and more times to get the fragments needed to unlock all the heroes.

Needless to say, this is not the only incentive to repeat these “mini-sessions”. The loot left on the ground from enemies is the focus of the game since it depends on the success or not of the Pagan Online. It gives us the opportunity to find not only weapons and accessories to wear for a bonus to attack and wing defence, but also all those materials that, upon discovery of recipes and projects, we enable the creation of new and powerful weapons. In fact after every match in real small arenas that make up the missions we have to collect dozens of objects. The bet to win the Pagan Online is all about here: if the maps are designed by the level designer, the population of the same and its loot are procedurally generated. Mad Head Games has to be so good at putting in place a system of rewarding immediately, in the same that is calibrated to the millimeter in order not to unbalance this real lottery with objects too powerful and rare, immediately available. Loot and crafting are not the only possibilities to make more effective our hero. Each skill has different step of expansion incremental to be activated also need materials, in addition to the canonical points to spend at level up. A “double coin” and then, another small limitation is inserted to push the player to repeat sections, the game force short then, to search for what you need.

The berserker that the mena as a blacksmithTo compensate for this inherent and deliberate repetition, the developers have inserted a value, that of the “family”, thought to be able to equip weapons of a higher level of our character. The more you play with all the heroes, the more this value increases. An expedient this, to spend so much time with all the nine heroes are not balanced just the one that seems most congenial. The goodness of the procedural system and the general variety will play a crucial role: for now, we seem to be well implemented, but having tested only a small portion of the game and of the whole “in progress”. But after having described a long structure and mode of game is right to dwell on the heart playful the offer. Pagan Online fun or no? The answer is without doubt yes. The berserker Kingewitch armed with a giant axe has really made to feel a fury unleashed, thanks to his lethal mix of melee attacks, and strokes, that trivially, we could define the area. The ones we prefer are the vortex, a sort of tornado human that we drive ourselves to sweep the ground; the stroke of the top, with obvious stunning of those which happen under our axe and the save of the gun to slow down enemies in a narrow cone in front of us. The combat system becomes a sort of real dance where you alternate between all of these skills, by the use of carefully choosing the targets. Each attack has its own recharge time, from a few seconds to well over a dozen, obviously without forgetting that all of this is regulated by the consumption of mana.

There are no potions to drink your mana will refill by hitting your opponents, then very often in the most difficult situations where we have previously sparked all of our skills, we will be forced to use basic attacks for it to get back to as quickly as possible. Never stops, that’s it. To survive it becomes very difficult, the choice of what, where and when to use a certain skill it becomes the first thing to learn. Pagan Online will be released on the PC, but given his system of movement and combat, there is came easy to think that the pad could be a valid alternative to mouse and keyboard. We then asked to be able to use a pad, and despite a key mapping still to fix, we found ourselves really well, with a gaming experience in some ways superior to that “standard”. The immediacy and ergonomics, we have really gained in this sense. The question we then posed to Jacob Beucler is if we’ll see the game on the console, with a particular eye on the Nintendo Switch, of course, where the brevity of the sessions seems to favor a use in mobility and hit-and-run. The response was as they say solomonic. The objective of Mad Head Games is exit to better you can on the PC, we responded Jacob, and if everything goes as it should go, the game will be released also on console. Needless to say, that there is a possibility this seems to be a stated goal.