Blood Knights Preview

GameInformer is offering a new preview for Deck13’s vampire-themed hack’n’slash Blood Knights, courtesy of a demonstration the writer attended to. Here’s a snippet:

As you hack and slash your way through enemies, your stats (health, strength, luck) naturally progress, but finding hidden Blood Coins adds a bonus boost to your stats. Also, as Jeremy and Alysa grow, perk points become available. These points go toward skills that impact your characters’ playstyle. For instance, you can increase the movement speed for Alysa, or learn the stun ability for Jeremy’s close combat. And what fun would a game about vampires be without tapping into their special powers? Both characters obtain special vampire abilities, like telekinesis, which also gain strength as the game goes on. The vampire abilities add creativity to kills, since enemies can be lifted and damaged in the air or tossed off ledges.

Blood is of the utmost importance in Blood Knights, but what’s unexpected is the twist it puts on basic gameplay. Sucking enemies’ blood is what restores your health, but Deck 13 takes the necessity of blood a step further. By letting you sacrifice some of your blood to revive a fallen teammate, it becomes a strategic element to manage. From what we played, revival seems like a hard strategic call: Can you take an enemy horde out on your own, or do you need your teammate’s help? As we experienced, sometimes sacrificing your health to revive your teammate proves more costly than beneficial.