Indie title Psycho Wolf is a new 2.5D game by the independent Polish developer Hydragon and published by Ultimate Games S.A. The title has just been released on Steam and I got the opportunity to review Psycho Wolf on PC. Before I even installed the game, the file size already suggested that it was never going to be a huge game, but a one-time experience where you play as a raging wolf, looking for sweet revenge on the poor villagers. This review will talk about the story plot, the gameplay features, graphics, and everything contained in this small title by Hydragon.
The game starts with a short introductory story about the protagonist, the Wolf, who was a cunning and mischievous character that fooled the villagers by selling fake gold bars. Although it was quite a successful business before his fraud was exposed, his fake gold bars soon started losing their gold color, revealing the true worth of the metal bars. This is followed by an uprising of the other village animals who decide to put the wolf in jail. After a long time in prison, the wolf starting eating the bars that he previously sold as fraud, which in return gave him power and rage to break out of the jail and look for revenge.
The game has a few levels which unlock as you complete each level before it. Starting with the first level, your task here is to kill every village animal that you can find. To help you kill the animals, you can find an axe pretty easily as your main weapon. Each level or stage is a small area with a few houses, small lakes, and villagers roaming around in a set pattern. The areas are not that huge and you can look spot every corner by just rotating the camera view. Visually, the game is not as bad, and the comical but repeating music that accompanies you adds a little to the fun.
The first thing you will have to get used to is the controls. While the standard movement keys are the WASD movement control keys on the keyboard, the point of view can only be rotated left or right with the mouse right-click and the left click button. This will get some time getting used to but is not something that is annoying. The rest of the controls are always displayed on the screen, starting with your attack button, action button, inventory, and objectives. Nothing out of the ordinary, but the layout and design are pretty good and easy to understand.
Besides the axe as your main weapon, you will also find a baseball bat to kill villagers in later stages. But you have more than weapons at your disposal to use against the animals. You have a handful of Crafting items that you can use for various purposes. Items that you can craft can be viewed in the Inventory menu, with their recipes and resources required to craft them. You have items like the Traps, Camo, Lockpicks, and a bag to hide and carry corpses. Each of these items requires resource materials which can be found in abundant supply in each of the levels. Resource items like nails, steel, wood, fiber, stone, and rope can all be obtained by destroying random items in the area.
Now let’s talk about the core gameplay mechanic, which is to kill villagers or enemies. There are 3-4 different types of enemies that you can kill. From the smaller 1-hit enemies to larger 2-4 hit enemies like bears and wild boars. Each enemy is highlighted with a hit number which indicates how many hits it will take to kill them. Unalerted enemies require fewer hits, but if an enemy is alerted, their hit counter is increased. For example, a smaller enemy with a 1-hit indication can be sneaked behind and hit once to kill. The same works for larger enemies like bears who require 2 hits when unalerted. However, if any of the enemies are alerted, their hit counter is doubled, meaning they require more hits to be killed.
Depending on the type of enemy, you will either be chasing an animal or being chased after. Smaller enemies are pesky and fast. If alerted, they scurry off trying to avoid you. On the other hand, larger enemies like bears and wild boars will chase after you, trying to hit you and deal you significant damage. Although this may sound like a tricky situation for you to get stuck in, it really isn’t the case. Enemies are far easy to counter, and no single enemy is impossible to take down. A chasing bear can easily be taken down even if their hit counter is increased to 4-hits. I rarely got to any situation that challenged me in combat, but rather, just picking each enemy one by one and completing the stage in less than 5 minutes at most.
This is where the intensity that was promised by the creators of Psycho Wolf comes into question. After having cleared 75% of the game’s levels, I rarely got to see a new enemy or a new fighting style other than just chasing the same types of animals in an area. Each stage completion requires you to kill all animals, but you also have a few other tasks like robbing a house, crafting a trap, etc. But these tasks are pointless for the completion of the level and can simply be ignored altogether. Each level that you unlock and play will have a slight change in looks, but the core gameplay remains the same, making it repetitive and boring.
In my opinion, there are two areas for the game to improve on. The story of Psycho Wolf has a good introduction but fails to tell anything more. Each level could have followed with a little story or background, giving the player a sense of direction, and where the game is headed towards. Another big disappointment for the game is the in-game items which are pretty much useless and ignored by the developers. Most of the items have no uses, like cold coins, money, and rage. Each of these items can be collected in the various stages of the game, but have no purpose or use. Once you get used to the combat, health items become useless too, as you easily dodge every incoming attack from the enemy.
Crafting items slowly fall in the pointless list too, as their uses seem far inefficient than your main weapon. You can, however, craft a camo suit allowing you to sneak behind enemies, but it is still far easy to sneak behind one with just a weapon in your hand, and quickly attacking to kill them. Lastly, there could have been more levels to play, but since the game lacks a good story all throughout game progression, it makes sense that it ends the way it does as the game gets repetitive after the first couple of stages. Nonetheless, if you are interested, you can purchase the game from here.
Final Conclusion:
Psycho Wolf has its pros and cons, but the cons outweigh the conclusion of what could have been a good storytelling game for all ages. The game lacks the intensity that the creators emphasized, while the gameplay becomes repetitive and boring pretty quickly. Most of the crafting items, resource materials, and collectibles become redundant when you realize it is much easier to clear each stage with just a single weapon. Granted that the game comes from an indie developer, and is an indie game, I have seen more titles with decent content, even if the gameplay is quite short. The concept, art, and music of the game are quite attractive, while the gameplay is pretty smooth as well. But it lacks a good story plot while underutilizing most of its gameplay features.
4/10
