TOP10 Indie Games for PC

Heroes of Hammerwatch is a very classic rogue-like, in which your goal is to climb the eponymous tower that was haunted by evil in the role of a nameless hero in a fantasy world. As usual for the genre, you will experience a large number of screen deaths and start the game over and over again, ideally unlocking new skills with each run, equipping yourself better or simply learning how to deal with certain opponents, traps or other special features to deal with. 

In terms of the story, the title does not tear up trees, but that is nothing unusual in this genre, because the focus here is clearly on the game mechanics and the various stages. Unlike some genre competitors such as Binding of Isaac or Neon Abyss, Heroes of Hammerwatch approaches the repetitive dungeon slaughter a little differently. Before you can jump into the fray, you have to choose one of nine different classes, not all of which are initially activated. These include the classic fantasy stereotypes such as the paladin, who represents a bulwark in close combat, the ranger, who uses his bow to target his enemies from a distance, or the thief, who is armed with two daggers and attacks hostile Can repel projectiles. There are also a few playful exotics like the Warlock, who can refresh his life and mana with his magical melee attacks and summon monsters, the priest, who can heal other group members – which is a blessing especially in multiplayer – or the Witch Hunter, who goes to the throat of the evil henchman with his crossbow and bombs. 

Once you have decided on a class, you start right away in a small base of the Heroes’ Guild. This once bloomed with life, but was then dropped. Now it’s up to you to fortify the area again and to rebuild the individual buildings, which is also the playful trick of Heroes of Hammerwatch.

Because instead of starting completely from scratch with every new attempt, you can use gold and ores that you find in the individual dungeons and mine shafts to expand your guild area piece by piece and thereby unlock bonuses and skills that you can use from the beginning on each run to be available. 

For example, if you set up a forge and improve it bit by bit, you can now purchase upgrades for your weapons, armor as well as your critical hit chances and the running speed. Or you prefer to invest your resources in the local hero trainer, who will improve your skills and teach you one or two new tricks – assuming a correspondingly high level. So that you don’t prematurely bless the time in the dark vaults, can you also hire a pharmacist who, depending on the level of expansion, offers you better and more effective potions or do you want to focus on certain aspects of the game and hit your money on your head? 

Then there is a tavern where you can take part in games of chance and have the opportunity to have certain drinks that give you passive bonuses and penalties, such as the fact that you get 100% more ore when you open come across a chunk of ore in your adventures – the downside? You hardly get any gold for it. There are also some other buildings such as a dealer who sells you temporary items for your current adventure, or a church, or, or, or … The buildings that you can invest in are diverse, but not overwhelming. In this way, however, you will be forced relatively early on to weigh up very carefully where you invest your meager resources. 

In this way, Heroes of Hammerwatch succeeds somewhat in excluding the frustrating element of total randomness, because no matter how unlucky you are with the random generation of the levels, you can always rely on the fact that you will get into the dungeons with certain advantages and you become noticeably more powerful the longer you play. This creates an extremely steeply rising motivation curve, which I personally rarely got to experience in a rogue-like manner.

The individual levels are peppered with deadly floor slabs, firing devices or falling debris that can cause massive damage to you at the beginning. Some rooms in the game are specially designed trap rooms, at the end of which a treasure chest awaits you. In order to achieve this, however, you have to be able to maneuver with your hero quite skillfully and often memorize different movement patterns of the individual traps. 

Occasionally you will also find puzzle rooms that come up with typical switch and logic puzzles and slow down the somewhat hectic gameplay. However, it is almost always worthwhile to take the time and take the risk to master these special challenges, because the treasure chests often contain diamonds or ore in addition to special equipment that gives you passive bonuses – such as more damage, a higher evasion rate or additional magical or physical damage – confer. 

You may lose this equipment when you die, but it can be a pretty big help when it comes to making progress. After every three levels of an area you will also always encounter a boss. In contrast to many competing titles, this is always fixed and does not vary. Each of the top villains comes up with different tactics, but all of them can be learned quickly – which does not mean that you will probably bless the time at the first attempt. As you work your way up the tower, you gradually get more and more experience points. If you have achieved enough, your character will move up the level and receive a certain number of stars, which you can later exchange for new skills in the guild at the hero trainer. 

The highlight: Your star, ore and gold accounts are not saved separately for each hero, but shared among all of them. This means that, for example, you can specialize your favorite hero more quickly by leveling up second or third heroes more quickly at the beginning, or you can boost newly created characters with a well-filled gold account right from the start. Above all, this leads to the fact that the inhibition threshold to try out a new class is initially lowered, because one does not have to start from scratch and constantly blesses the temporal immediately.