Endangered Demo

Simple shooters can be the perfect solution to boring afternoons, especially if you are too tired for hardcore shooters like Battlefield or Call of Duty. However, it’s still important for the said mechanics to be as polished as possible, because it’s no fun to struggle with the controls or the gameplay when you are trying to have fun.

Endangered is a simple first-person shooter in which you get to fight other players and a few aliens as well. There are no new gameplay mechanics to challenge your skills, which is both good and bad at the same time. In essence, the only worry is to aim as accurately as possible and keep the mouse button down until the enemy in sights is eliminated. This can be the perfect formula for a casual shooter, but in this case something doesn’t work as intended.

To begin with, there are only a handful of maps to choose from, as well as a few character classes. These classes force you to change your play style a bit, but don’t expect anything too exciting either, since the overall experience still feels very cheap and unpolished. On the other hand, the game is barely in early access at the moment, so many things are bound to change in the future.

For some reason, the movement feels very awkward and unbalanced, which makes it difficult to concentrate sometimes. The weapons lack feedback, so it takes a very long time to get used to them, which is not good news in a fast-paced shooter that technically rewards your quick reflexes. There’s not much of a choice in regards to weapons anyway, which is yet another disappointment.

Lastly, the graphics are not bad for a change, but the level design is nothing to write home about either. The maps are a bit too repetitive and disappointing, given the fact that the buildings are empty and the textures repeat themselves over and over again. The sound effects can be disregarded entirely as well, depending on whether you can ignore them with ease.

In the end, Endangered does not seem to feature any interesting mechanics or new ideas, which makes it difficult to keep playing for more than a few minutes at a time. However, things are bound to change as the developers keep working on their project in the following months.