Game Reviews

A Way to Slay review - A hack and slash game with a smart puzzling twist

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iOS
| A Way to Slay
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A Way to Slay review - A hack and slash game with a smart puzzling twist
|
iOS
| A Way to Slay

Have you ever wondered how the lone hero in all those films manages to take down a whole bunch of assailants without getting fatally wounded? Me too, which is why A Way to Slay is such an interesting proposition.

It mixes together a puzzler and an action game, slathers the whole thing in thick red blood, and finishes it off with some of the most pleasing, and brutal, murdering animations you're going to have seen in a long time.

It's not without its problems, but when it's getting things right it offers up a unique, tactical, time-chasing experience that's full to the brim with swords and slaughter.

Hack the planet

You're playing as a warrior facing seemingly insurmountable odds. It's up to you to mount those odds. Essentially, every turn you need to choose which of your assailants you're going to kill. Double tap on them and you'll execute your attack.

But if any other foes are too close to the one you're attacking, they'll take their chance and cut you down once you've dealt with their friend. So you need to choose carefully, figuring out the safe targets to hack up.

A Way to Slay iOS review screenshot - Fighting ninja

The other warriors don't remain still though. Instead as you move they'll move too, chasing the sword-wielding blur that's cutting through their ranks. You need to use this to your advantage, dragging soldiers out of position and into spaces you can get to them without taking a hit.

To begin with you're only taking out foes that go down in a single hit, but the deeper into the game you go, the tougher your opponents become. You'll need to hit them multiple times in order to kill them.

A Way to Slay iOS review screenshot - Getting killed

The end result is a game of tactics and risk that's actually incredibly morish. The violence, while out of your control save for choosing who it happens to, is brilliantly done, and there's an urge to push on and complete everything the game tosses at you.

Some levels are incredibly tough to figure out, stacked up with multiple assailants, all with more health than you. When you get to the end of one of those challenges, you feel like maybe you really are the sort of hero that deserves their own movie..

Slash the planet

There are times here when things are just too tough, when you'll come up against a level that feels like it's impossible to complete. Butting against these walls isn't fun, but finally getting past them can be a massive relief.

The controls here aren't the best in the world either, especially the ones you use to move the camera around in order to see who to stab next. But both of these are problems that the game just about manages to get past.

There's a unique richness to A Way to Slay that belies its inherent simplicity. It's not a great game, but it is the sort of game that can easily make a train journey fly by in gouts of blood and spurts of gore.

A Way to Slay review - A hack and slash game with a smart puzzling twist

There are some tough challenges here, but A Way to Slay mostly manages to make you feel like a hero
Score
Harry Slater
Harry Slater
Harry used to be really good at Snake on the Nokia 5110. Apparently though, digital snake wrangling isn't a proper job, so now he writes words about games instead.