UnSummoning: the Spectral Horde Review
I’ve just edited the title of this review. No, I didn’t put the wrong game in there; what I did do was delete the words “Early Access”. For several days now I’ve been under the impression that UnSummoning: the Spectral Horde was in Steam Early Access but, apparently, I was wrong…
What UnSummoning: the Spectral Horde is, is a sort of cross between a match-three game, a top-down shooter and a fairly basic puzzler. You control a cute little Necromancer who has attempted to summon the eponymous Spectral Horde in an effort to conquer the world. But, instead, the Horde turns on him and he has to fend them off with his magic wand (probably a staff, actually: Necromancer and all that) and… blocks. Coloured blocks. Coloured to match the differently coloured ghosts. You collect more blocks for a bigger blast from your staff and running over a differently coloured block will reset the block counter back to 0.
At the beginning of each of UnSummoning: the Spectral Horde‘s levels, we’re told about the continued flight of our little Necrobuddy and given a little bit of a background as to the level we find ourselves in. It’s a nice way of getting a little story into the game but, sometimes, it feels as though it’s just been tacked on to try and make us care about the little Necroguy: it feels like a story in search of a game to attach itself to rather than a game with an interesting story. Then again, we don’t really play puzzle games like this for their engaging storylines; we play them for their gameplay.
The gameplay in UnSummoning requires you to engage quite a few different parts of your brain – it’s certainly one of the most involved puzzle games I’ve played recently – but it can feel as though it’s verging on brain-training territory when things get really hairy. You’ve got to control your Necromatey’s movement with one hand (avoiding ghosts and maneuvering around the grid of blocks) and his aim with the other, keep an eye on which colour ghosts are coming at you and which colour blocks you’re currently collecting, and then be mindful of whatever power-up you’ve got active so you can use it to your best advantage. Power-ups and health boosts help you take out the beasties and prevent you from dying and, if you collect enough blocks of a single colour, the blast radius of your main attack increases so that you can wipe more nasties off the map (provided they’re the right colour). UnSummoning is, also, not without it’s inherent tactics, too: lure ghosts around the map so that you can take more out with a single shot, stagger un-matched ghosts and clear out unwanted or otherwise hindrance-causing blocks by firing off single bursts (which do nothing but could leave you in a better position than you were previously).
Later levels add more ghosts and a greater variety of colours and, from about the fourth level, the difficulty ramps up quite alarmingly: to the point where, in a temple level, I had to restart more times than I’ve got fingers to count on due to getting overwhelmed by ghosts. Unfortunately, though, this has more to do with the random placement of the coloured tiles than it does with clever level design. Your Necrodude is swift enough to evade most attacks (you can even dart through the ghosts if you time it right) and you can build a shot powerful enough to knock un-matched enemies back a bit with only three blocks but, if the block-placement really isn’t on your side, you may find yourself in a situation where you’re swiftly outnumbered by more powerful enemies.
The main reason for my thinking that UnSummoning: the Spectral Horde was in Early Access was that I was left wanting more from even a short play-session. The base game is fine – it’s an engaging puzzler with an interesting twist in both story and gameplay, it has good graphics (the sound could really use some work, though) and a bit of a narrative – but I got the feeling that there was more to come, that – just around the corner – would be another twist, another puzzle, maybe a timed colour matching game or a mini-boss fight (where the boss’ colour changes), or I’d hit a power-up that made all of the ghosts white for a minute or something, anything; just not more of the same.
But, “more of the same” is pretty much what we’ve got. Unfortunately for me UnSummoning isn’t in Early Access: this is the finished product and we’ve got to judge it on those merits, not on some upcoming release that’s going to bring more finesse or a slew of gameplay changes and additions to really lift UnSummoning: the Spectral Horde up to stand amongst more polished or seemingly more complete games. On those merits, then: while UnSummoning does have some good gameplay ideas and does put a neat little twist on otherwise quite tired motifs, its reluctance to branch out, to try and add more dimensions or do something different to break up the flow (and my growing ennui) means that its not got the longevity of many other puzzle games available for the same price (or lower) – indeed, I fear that it’ll end up as part of the Horde itself before too long – and I probably won’t be the one to necro it (fernar fernar).
