Rate top gamesI’m always on the lookout for the next Vampire Survivors-alike to suck me in (no pun intended, I swear). I’ve ever so slightly fallen out of love with VS since they released their recent-ish, thematically dubious DLCs, and I’ve not felt the same pull to go back to it as I did when Tides of Foscari and Legacy of the Moonspell dropped. So when I spotted Heretic’s Fork sat in my to-play list, I figured it could well be my new favourite time-sink.
Heretic’s Fork is billed as a mashup of tower defence and survivor-style games with a bit of deck building added in for good measure. However, rather than plotting where multiple towers go along a walkway for enemy mobs, you’re a single tower in the centre of the map which needs to kill enemy mobs coming in from the shadowy edges as they try to escape hell.
There are a few different types of towers you can utilise for this, ranging from garrisons that send out little demons with sniper rifles or kamikaze exploding imps, to flamethrower towers, towers with machine guns, and towers that just spin giant flails around killing everything coming your way.
There’s also some mild deck-building involved, where cards can be utilised to upgrade your towers or garrisons, or the type of damage you do. You can also merge two cards of the same power together to create a random card of the power level above, which is really useful for getting the good stuff.
Initially, the first few playthroughs of Heretic’s Fork were great, trying to find out what towers work best. There was joy in finally getting to the next level of hell after beating your head against it a few times. Sadly though, once you hit on a winning formula, you’re pretty much done. I found the secret sauce to be the flail tower Judgement along with the Living Shadow card that increases the number of flails you use, coupled with the Unholy MG machine gun tower. Three of each of them and I could not lose a run.
The maps don’t change, there’s no feeling of “just one more go” to drag you back in, and you generally know you’ve already won before you even start as there’s no real RNG to the enemies or different locations to keep it interesting. The only thing that changes are the randomised cards you get for your deck. Even the different characters you can choose to play as bring pretty much nothing interesting to the table.
I know that there are harder difficulty modes to unlock and there is actually some story in there as well, but I cannot bring myself to play through repeating the same thing over and over again to actually unlock these modes. I still enjoyed my time with Heretic’s Fork; it sadly is just not the Vampire Survivors beater I was hoping for.
https://questtozero.com/game-review/heretics-fork-review/
Heretic’s Fork is billed as a mashup of tower defence and survivor-style games with a bit of deck building added in for good measure. However, rather than plotting where multiple towers go along a walkway for enemy mobs, you’re a single tower in the centre of the map which needs to kill enemy mobs coming in from the shadowy edges as they try to escape hell.
There are a few different types of towers you can utilise for this, ranging from garrisons that send out little demons with sniper rifles or kamikaze exploding imps, to flamethrower towers, towers with machine guns, and towers that just spin giant flails around killing everything coming your way.
There’s also some mild deck-building involved, where cards can be utilised to upgrade your towers or garrisons, or the type of damage you do. You can also merge two cards of the same power together to create a random card of the power level above, which is really useful for getting the good stuff.
Initially, the first few playthroughs of Heretic’s Fork were great, trying to find out what towers work best. There was joy in finally getting to the next level of hell after beating your head against it a few times. Sadly though, once you hit on a winning formula, you’re pretty much done. I found the secret sauce to be the flail tower Judgement along with the Living Shadow card that increases the number of flails you use, coupled with the Unholy MG machine gun tower. Three of each of them and I could not lose a run.
The maps don’t change, there’s no feeling of “just one more go” to drag you back in, and you generally know you’ve already won before you even start as there’s no real RNG to the enemies or different locations to keep it interesting. The only thing that changes are the randomised cards you get for your deck. Even the different characters you can choose to play as bring pretty much nothing interesting to the table.
I know that there are harder difficulty modes to unlock and there is actually some story in there as well, but I cannot bring myself to play through repeating the same thing over and over again to actually unlock these modes. I still enjoyed my time with Heretic’s Fork; it sadly is just not the Vampire Survivors beater I was hoping for.
https://questtozero.com/game-review/heretics-fork-review/