Theatre of Doom

Theatre of Doom is one of the most creative game concepts I’ve stumbled on for a while now. There have been other games that have pushed new gameplay ideas and mechanics, but the setting to this one is just beautiful. Fighting puppet demons on the stage of Hell. That’s kind of poetic.

Right now, at this time, Theatre of Doom is still in its early stages of life and development, so there are quite a few things so iron out. For one, the character’s attack and movement animations feel a bit too rushed, twitchy at times. They need smoothing out somehow.

Apart from that, there’s nothing else to get on your bad side. Keep in mind that this is an indie title and a darn good looking one at that. Theatre of Doom fuses hack and slash with shoot’em up to create something dynamic and intense. It takes a bit to get used to the controls and to master evasion tactics but in the end, the game performs well and offers an enjoyable experience. It has tons of potential, even if we want to stop at just the macabre setting.

I’m still pretty much hooked on the idea of fighting demons that are actual puppets to some greater dark force. It could even be an alternative vision to Dante’s Inferno. One in which Dante wears a badass armor shoots a large caliber rifle and slices the forces of Hell with an awesome sword.

To add to the good parts of the game, there’s even a Co-Op mode and a large number of (planned) levels to fight in. However, when you consider the latter, you might not enjoy fighting 50 levels and having the same skills to use over and over. Hopefully, the devs will find a solution to keeping players engaged for as much as possible.

I can see a lot of people flocking to this game once it’s complete. It has a lot of potential as a casual arena game and as a full-featured hardcore demon fight fest.