Hordes of Hunger Review and Gameplay Analysis
The game Hordes of Hunger demonstrates balanced gameplay and unbalanced gameplay. Hordes of Hunger serves as a 3D action game developed by the Blood West creators who developed their first title. The game currently is out of Early Access phase, which requires players to control Mir for her mission to protect her homeland against the Living Hunger corrupting threat. The game tries to combine two different systems, which includes the survivor genre's monster slaying through wave based progression and the third person action game's gritty hack and slash combat system.
The current build delivers a complete experience with 1 year of updates and endless modes and story expansions. The game delivers satisfying combat visuals while it suffers from mechanical imbalances between its combat mechanics and its visual elements.
Hordes of Hunger requires players to perform manual attacks because its gameplay functions differently from Vampire Survivors, which has automated attacking systems. Players can use light attacks and heavy attacks and special abilities and defensive moves that include dashing and side stepping and parrying. Players must defeat progressively harder enemy waves while they complete dynamic objectives at arena style levels, which serve as the game's main survival loop.
The objectives create different pacing cycles, which include hunting specific targets and protecting NPCs and chasing down scavengers or dashing away from threats. The boss fight starts after players complete all three quest phases. Players go between these moments into the Sanctuary phases, where they must choose between taking risks or returning to the central area.
The game uses a Rogue lite system to progress through its stages. Players will receive experience orbs after defeating monsters, which leads to leveling up; players must choose between three upgrades after their first level increase. The NPCs in the Sanctum hub world, including Rodri the city herald, deliver the story through decent voice acting.
Players use Feathers to obtain permanent upgrades, which enable them to keep their progress in subsequent runs. The space includes a kitchen that provides temporary buff meals and a forge that enables weapon crafting. Players can build swords and hammers and other weapon types through part combinations, which players discover in chests; each weapon delivers its own attack speed and distinct attack patterns.
The game currently has an identity problem because its two core elements of difficulty and balance remain in conflict. The power fantasy system creates problems because it allows players to reach strong power levels too fast. Players who understand the build mechanics—especially auto attack moves can rapidly defeat both mobs and bosses. Players who reach the final waves will find problems with permanent progression because the base game fails to provide enough challenging content.
Players experience clunky mechanics throughout the entire game. The parry system gives players a narrow success window, which locks them into a two second recovery animation; this animation becomes a death sentence when enemies surround them. Jump attacks move at slow speeds and make players open to enemy attacks. Players will achieve the best results through basic movement techniques, which include dashing and side stepping, because they should not use any complicated game mechanics.
The game features many abilities, but their balance becomes problematic, which includes elemental attacks that produce satisfying effects through lightning and fire. The Vampire build has healing on kill as its main ability, which makes all other builds less effective in the game. Players need reliable healing for the new Endless Mode because the exploding enemies create unavoidable damage, which makes the mode particularly necessary for healing.
The entire crafting economy lacks proper development because it remains in an unfinished state. Players will find the crafting bench to be worthless because starter weapons match the performance of rare crafted weapons. The game requires players to grind weapon runes and Feathers, which becomes an unbearably slow process because the weapon runes and Feathers need to pay for upgrades that become increasingly expensive, which makes late game progress turn into a tedious task instead of an enjoyable experience.
The game delivers better visual performance than its initial visual capabilities. The game presents a dark and gritty environment, which uses fleshy combat effects to create heavy impact sensations. The elemental abilities create visually pleasing effects on screen. The design features multiple major issues because the Sanctuary phase transition forces the screen to show a bright white light, which causes physical eye pain for viewers.
- Pros
- Great visual atmosphere with satisfying combat effects.
- Decent voice acting and story integration.
- Active combat offers more engagement than standard auto-battlers.
- Dynamic quest objectives keep runs from being static.
- Risk/Reward system with Keys allows for strategic extraction.
- Cons
- Severe balancing issues: the game is either too easy or unfairly punishing depending on the build.
- Clunky controls (parry and jump attacks leave you vulnerable).
- Crafting system feels meaningless; rare weapons lack impact.
- "Vampire" build is the only viable option for high-level play.
- Blinding white screen effects during transitions.
- Progression economy is too grindy and repetitive.
The game Hordes of Hunger possesses great potential to become a major success in its gaming category. The game presents excellent visual design elements while the active combat system provides an enjoyable experience for players who enjoy survivor like games. The game needs polishing and useful crafting elements and rebalancing and The most important issue is progression. Playing for 10 hours and achieving nothing is extremely frustrating. This needs to be fixed.
Pc Version Tested.
Disclosure: We received a free review copy of this product from Devs
