Assault on Hartblood Hotel sees a trio of assassins making their way to the top of a bloody hotel before an unknown curse whittles them to pieces.
There’s all kinds of trouble waiting for you inside this place, but your three assassins are determined to make their way to the top. Each has an interesting combat style to put to work, too. Stingray will use wrestling moves to slam the enemies (I guess the only thing worse than a regular headbutt is an ELECTRIC headbutt). America shoots people, because of course she does. But she’ll also brawl with ever single enemy all at once, too. Finally, Hikari will stab people with a knife or heal up one of your party members. Considering the enemies rarely let up for more than a few seconds, you’ll be putting all those powers to work. And they’ll steadily learn new tricks to bring to the turn-based combat, too.
You’re going to want to pay attention to weaknesses, both your own and those of your foes. You’ll do more damage against certain types of foes (our knife and gun-wielding schoolgirls crumple when you brawl with them), but they’ll likewise do more to you. It’s especially important since you need to end the fights quickly. There are curses that strike you every ten seconds that pass, and each attack eats up a certain amount of time. These curses start pretty light, only chewing through a bit of your health, but when combined with enemies already beating the hell out of you, they can eventually tip the scales against you. If you die, though, it’s a fine excuse to play through the game and listen to its excellent music tracks again.
Assault on Hartblood Hotel is a tense take on turn-based RPGs by adding a fair amount of danger, a neat setting, and some cool foes to fight. Plus, if you dug VA-11 HALL-A, you’ll pick up on a few fun nods if you’re paying attention.
Assault on Hartblood Hotel is playable now on the Ludum Dare site.
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