PERISH

Heaven and hell are popular themes for games. In Perish, an FPS rogue-like, you find yourself in purgatory instead. Neither good enough for Elysium or bad enough for hell, you must strap on your armor and fight your way to the halls of Elsyium.

Players start out with nothing but an axe and must find or kill for everything else in the game. Bodies of demons can be sold to priests to get coin for upgraded weapons and armor—essential for the much harder battles to come. The game starts off with a tutorial that helps you learn how to kick, block, and throw your axe with the help of the priest who will be your guide for the rest of the game.

Up to 4 Players

Perish looks to be a fairly standard FPS game, with the usual monsters, weapons, and goals. The monsters and color scheme are strongly reminiscent of Hunt, but instead of fighting zombies and avoiding crows, you’ll be wandering the black sands of Purgatory.

Also, like Hunt, you’re allowed to play with other players, up to four in a team as you hunt demons. While you can still play it single player, the multiplayer option is very welcome.

Stiff Animations

While the developers have released a few gameplay demos and sneak previews, there has not been a lot of feedback from beta players. What we can see is that in most of the released content is some very stiff animations. While the graphics themselves are good with creative weapons and monsters, the characters and mobs move very stiffly. Weapons also don’t seem to move naturally and are very stiff. This may take something away from the gameplay, especially if it isn’t polished before release.

Unoriginal

Although Perish has a storyline and some creativity in the form of unique looking mobs and weapons, the game itself seems very unoriginal. The afterlife is a very common theme in rogue-likes with Doom, Hades, Dante’s Inferno, and many other games focusing on these aspects of the afterlife.

Perish doesn’t seem to offer anything unique here. It’s fighting monsters, upgrading equipment, and moving towards a goal—virtually the same as every other FPS game in this setting. The demo shows that you can kick, block, swing and throw an axe. You receive help from a priest, who appears as a statue. She guides you with instructions for future missions, upgrades your equipment, and guides you through the tutorial.

Although the game seems well built, it doesn’t have anything special to add to the FPS or rogue-like genre.

Pros:

• Decent graphics
• Multiplayer

Cons:

• Stiff animations
• Unoriginal

PERISH is a brutal indie action game with a good online mode where a team of four friends gets into Athenian mythos and saber-rattles creepy mummies, bloody legionnaires, giant skeletons, walkers and spiky reptiles.

Gameplay:

• Collect magical artifacts with your friends
• First-person combat with fearsome creatures
• Arm yourself with a spear, sword, bow, club, or just kick
• Move through artistic locations - desert, ancient temple, bloody jungle, acidic dungeons