Voodolls – PC Review

Genre: 3D action tower defense
Developer: SideRift
Publisher: Tate Multimedia
Release Date: May 11th, 2023
Edited by AlexKnight2005

With an extra chance at atoning for their sins, souls of the afterlife are given another chance. With the help of some magic and a puppet master, these souls are placed into special voodoo dolls, where they acquire some power and weapons to help defend against evil.

Voodolls is a tower defense strategy game that incorporates co-op and action. The game also takes place in worlds with a unique combination of a few different person views, such as first-person, third-person, and isometric.

Before you head into the game, you’ll be prompted to select from some characters that each have a unique basic attack and ability. If you’re playing with friends, multiple people cannot play the same character, but up to four options exist. Each has a specialty; one may be good for crowd control another might be better for area damage. None of them have any unique towers or can upgrade anything uniquely, though. But if you’re playing alone, there isn’t much difference between them that would impede normal gameplay.

This doesn’t have the typical tower defense mechanics. It sort of takes place on these small worlds, which you can traverse around on. It has a unique feel because you can see the world turn under you as you run around. And the paths you have to defend can come from multiple sides that curve with the world. As you place towers, you can place them normally in front of yourself or use the isometric view for a more native feeling. When the round starts after you place your towers, you’ll have to protect your master. Each time you kill enemies or complete the round, you gain currency to create more towers. Unlocking new towers only comes when you complete each new world. Most of the time, each new tower that is given has some kind of usage for that level and levels after that, such as armor penetration or some kind of element damage. But the game dives into something that makes it hard to keep the attention.

It doesn’t have the typical upgrade system relevant to anything. Each level is relatively short, with few waves. During later levels, when you can upgrade towers, you only get a set amount of upgrades to towers that come from completing a round or a chance when you defeat an elite unit. Upgrading a tower makes it a slightly better version of the previous one, and you only get a very small number to upgrade. This would make sense if they were powerful, but it doesn’t make too much of a difference. And from that, it would be suggested that your character would get more powerful, but you don’t get anything besides what you’ve had initially. Both sides don’t have a lot of interactivity. You rarely get to upgrade towers and have a bunch of what seems like normal-weak towers, so your character does most of the heavy work, but then your character doesn’t get any more powerful or new things to try out. And that leads into the world itself.

While the shifting world is cool, how the land is laid out makes it hard to even use the towers. Each tower has a different range or can be set up on the path itself, such as traps. You can essentially place towers anywhere on the map with an open area and not too close to another tower, but the way the A.I. and hitboxes are set up makes it feel like traps are useless or the paths are way too big. The enemies will go through some terrain you can’t build near or by, and tower shots get blocked by that same terrain. This can be anything like fences, trees, or rocks near the path. If the towers are attacking the nearest or first target, a lot of damage is lost from them trying to shoot through this terrain, and sometimes there is no option not to build next to or near these objects. Then the paths are so wide, and the traps are small; most of the time, the A.I. walks randomly around or not even near them, rendering them useless with wasted resources. Rarely will you get a spot where there is an area small enough for them to get used; this also is a detriment due to many of the traps being some kind of crowd control, such as slowing.

Visually, it’s a very cartoony-looking game, a little bit whimsical. Probably the best part is the different worlds and environments. Seeing the theme of the entire world all at once from different views is an awesome feature. However, everything else is just stuff that needs refinement. Music and sound are a bit lacking, along with the U.I. being somehow simplistic but also confusing. And a few optimization issues.

It was interesting at first, but unfortunately didn’t seem like it had enough to keep that interest going. With the lack of direction of combining action class shooter and tower defense, it’s missing out on making either side enjoyable to continue seeing what comes next. Limiting both along with short levels and some towers can’t even be used the way it seems to be intended made it seem the progression wasn’t very rewarding or let you strategize at all. While it seems like it could be even more fun with a full group, it feels like there isn’t enough to the mechanics.

Pros:

• Interesting world-level mechanic

Cons:

• Content lacking for shooter / tower defense
• Progression is not very rewarding

Avorok gives VooDolls a Drastik Measure of 6.0 out of 10.0 (60)

I wish it at least had more in the tower system. Though other than those issues, it could be a short little time killer with friends, and I couldn’t really recommend it for solo gameplay. Besides the optimization, you can still get some time out of it, and the game doesn’t really have any bugs, just kind of barebones. You can pick up Voodolls on Steam for $14.99