It’s time for another first-person shooter Survivors-like. Slyders (I’m completely unsure as to where that name comes from) drops you into one of four maps with three difficulties each and tasks you with surviving for 15 minutes and beating a strong boss. The game doesn’t last long and has some noticeable issues with its difficulty curve, but this is a more-than-satisfactory Survivors-like that does a lot of things right, chief among them offering a fun arena shooter with some really cool perks.
It’s pretty clear from a glance that Slyders is inspired by Serious Sam, albeit not as strongly as the other Serious Sam-inspired Survivors-like, the aptly named Serious Survivors. The name of the game is furiously backpedalling while unloading your guns into a crowd of enemies. At first, only the first map is unlocked alongside its easiest variation. Once you clear this, you unlock the next difficulty, which adds more enemies per wave and is a bit more challenging. Beating this one unlocks the next map, and so on and so forth. You’ll do this three times to unlock the fourth and final map.
At first, the only weapons you have at your disposal are a pair of handguns. Fulfilling various requirements (usually just beating a level on a specific difficulty) will net you more, which you’ll purchase with gold accrued from the levels. Enemies routinely drop coins upon death, but you’ll be getting most of your gold from Demon Chests that spawn, which you need to chase down and kill to get both gold and gems, and from successfully completing levels. The amount of gold and gems you get from beating a level increases with its difficulty.
As with many of these games, the shooting and movement are kind of floaty, but the gameplay here feels pretty good. You’ll naturally want to never stop moving, as enemies spawn from all directions. One of the game’s biggest annoyances is that enemies nearly constantly show up behind you, but at least there are red indicators that blink when some are close by, accompanied by a sound effect to let you know to get out of Dodge. Your only default bits of movement tech are a dodge (that doesn’t move through enemies) and a quick turn that’s handy for dispatching foes to your rear. However, I did find the amount of damage I took from behind my character to be pretty annoying overall.
Enemies drop blue crystals that level you up, which lets you choose a perk. There’s not exactly a big pool of these, but considering that the game is only four levels long, that’s understandable. These come in the form of stat enhancements, as well as active and passive perks. You can have four of each of these at once, with active perks mapped to four buttons. The most useful of these for most of the game lets you shoot a powerful laser or drop bombs on any foes in a line in front of you. They’re especially useful against bosses. As for passives, these let you summon various creatures, such as a bipedal elephant called Bernard or a giant rock that rolls around the arena. All of the above can also be improved upon levelling.
Other guns include a shotgun, machine gun, ray gun, laser gun, and lightning gun. The laser gun’s my favourite of the bunch, as the lightning gun has a very short range and auto-aims only, making it less satisfying to use. Moreover, you’ll unlock permanent upgrades that can be purchased with gold, although these are of dubious usefulness much of the time. A late-game upgrade gives you up to 15% life regen, which barely does anything and is equivalent to just a couple of levels of the regular perk. These upgrades are also tied to various milestones.
One of the best features in Slyders lets you use gems to purchase rune slots, granting equippable abilities. The most useful of these gives you a revive, which also gives you maximum life once it’s fully upgraded. There are three of these, and they’re quite handy. Another one I preferred lets you max out your dodge early, giving it more range as well as an additional charge. This feels necessary to survive some of the later levels. Levels include a desert, wetlands, a graveyard, and the tundra.
Finally, beating a boss (there are a few per level) nets you a new piece of gear, of which there are eight types. These offer minor bonuses, but you can combine them to make for higher-tier gear, which takes a while and doesn’t necessarily make much difference. Due to all of this, though, Slyders has a solid amount of options at your disposal at any time, making for some fairly engaging meta progression. Granted, there’s really not that much to unlock, but this is for the best since the game isn’t built for longevity.
This is especially due to how low the difficulty for the first three levels is across the board. I beat all three difficulties of the graveyard level on my first try, although the wetlands level was tougher due to an omnipresent dragon flying overhead and ice mages consistently slowing you down with their spells. But Slyders doesn’t tend to get all that difficult until the last level, where it honestly gets a little unreasonable. On higher difficulties, surviving can feel borderline impossible due to the number of projectiles being fired at you at once. On top of that, this level’s boss is overpowered, as it can melt you in a matter of seconds due to an overwhelming number of projectiles.
One thing I absolutely have to mention is that, while practically everything in the game was created for it, the skill cards all use AI-generated artwork. To be blunt, they look bad because they’re just obviously generic AI images. The dev has said that he wanted an actual artist to do them, but there were so many that it couldn’t be worked into the budget, and that the quality of anything from Fiverr wasn’t quite what he wanted either, so he did this instead. Personally, I would have preferred pretty much anything else here.
It took me less than six hours to beat the last boss on normal, but I still need to beat the final level on the two higher difficulties. However, there’s just not much room for my character to get any stronger, so I’m not even sure if that’s feasible, as staying alive on these difficulties once you get to five minutes remaining feels like a bit of a tall order. I like Slyders overall, but the difficulty curve definitely needs some work. With that said, it’s an enjoyable Survivors-like FPS that’s a respectable way to spend a few hours, especially if you’re looking for another solid one of those after playing Bloodshed or the like.
Slyders: An entertaining, albeit short, Survivors-like with a lot of fun skills, Slyders has some difficulty curve problems and uses AI-generated images for some of its art, making it a bit of a tougher sell. – Andrew Farrell
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