Onslaught! Arena from Geoff Blair, Matt Hackett

Drop in and slay some wicked critters, but stay on your toes! Onslaught! Arena punishes those who are not fleet of foot and quick of…stab…(?)

Back to the Drawing Board…to Draw Some Blood

Originally designed for Boing Boing’s Games Inspired by Music contest, the game was further developed and rammed full of content. The full game is a high speed affair requiring steady nerves, and constant movement. Early stages will trot out a few targets to bring down, and later stages will barrage you with fiendish combinations of enemies, packing nasty physical and magic attacks. Keep an eye out for treasure bonuses, and be sure to pick up weapon upgrades and hit-point boosting roast beast.

Smash TV Before TV Was Invented

Use W, A, S and D to move. Your arrow keys will fire in the directions they face. Combining two directions for either, will allow for diagonals, which comes in handy when attempting to weave through the teeny spaces between fireballs, hurled rocks and magic wave attacks. You can also use your mouse to fire your arrows, swords, axes, spears, fireballs etc – doing so causes a little arcane bulls-eye to appear on the playing field, but whether it is more useful that the precision of arrow keys remains under hot debate.

Where have I seen this before? Part of the nostalgia comes from as far back as the arena fights in Castle Crashers wherein the enemies swarm down from above, but no, that’s not it: the game has a solid 8-bit presentation – the weapons, enemy critters and sound effects are similar in feel to those you might find in the original…Legend of Zelda! [Something we clearly did not see enough of last year. Oh yeah and it’s Opposite day. – Ed.] Onslaught! Arena strips away the questing elements and substitutes firepower, making for a drastically different game.

Should you clear a boss battle, you will be able to continue your game from that point after you (inevitably) perish. It won’t feel like much if you get to the ninth level in the next wave, but not having to start from level one is preferable to a pointy boot in the junk.

I’d Buy That For Two Dollars

Play through the 10 waves compiled for the demo version and get a feel for the game. There’s a varied selection of caged combatants to square off against, and you’ll likely hunger for the more complete game. My one complaint (as a southpaw) would be that there is currently no way to switch the movement and attack commands. With this in mind, I visited the forum page, and sure enough, it would seem that a fix is in the works.

The current price for the full game is a scant $1.99. Interestingly enough, Onslaught! Arena is available for purchase at the Chrome Web Store

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