A tower defense game where your archery skills are the only things holding back the hordes.
Step into the world of Norse mythology and use your archery skills to beat back defeat.
Ashen Arrows by Rusty Pipes Games, is a virtual reality (VR) archery game in the tower defense genre. Here, you are a legendary hunter in the world where the Norse gods thrive. Use your bow, earn upgrades, and beat back waves of relentless enemies to complete your mission – while showcasing your skills as an archer.
Upon launching the game, you’re treated to a tutorial which has a lot more free movement than your usual tower defense game – which is both a cunning trick and breath of fresh air, compared to other similar games.
Here you’re given a quick walkthrough over how to shoot, upgrading your items, unlocking special arrows, and of course, surviving.
The gameplay is very simple, nock an arrow and shoot. But the upgrades here can allow you to customize your upgrades based on your style.
Finishing waves of enemies can sometimes net you an upgrade point, this can be used to upgrade your bow, arrows, or even allow for more perks. These upgrades are sometimes decent, but mostly, a well placed shot can do better than these upgrades.
To access these upgrades, there’s a chest with runes – usually in a very visible spot. You shoot it to pick your upgrades.
There are two modes in the game: saga – a solo campaign – and bastion mode – where you can team up with others to defend your base. While bastion allows for modifiers, neither is really different from the other in terms of gameplay.
To note, you will also have to play other modes in order to progress through the saga, you can’t move forward without jumping over to bastion – which is not only annoying, it points to how lacking this game is that players are forced into other game modes.
In fact, Ashen Arrows as a whole is a very basic game that doesn’t do much to really entice players to come back.
Sure, there is a story in saga mode, but there’s nothing engaging about it. You die in the tutorial thanks to a dragon, and are revived by Odin to keep fighting. You get more god blessings as you progress, but in terms of story, you’re basically just a hunter who is trying to impress a pantheon. Compare this game to something like In Death: Unchained where you and your bow have the ability to roam a map – killing enemies that look good in a world that’s both barren and beautiful – and you’ll notice that the former is very much a game that is missing that special something.
Graphics here are alright, there’s nothing ugly, but the art style does make things looks rather blocky. Playing the pre-release version, there were some moments when it looked like there were framerate issues – firing an arrow or hitting an enemy would see a slight hiccup – but nothing too serious.
In fact, the real issue here is just that this is a very basic game. There isn’t much that can be said about a game such as this, besides the fact that it’s probably not going to be in the top selling list anytime soon.
Yes, tower defense games are engaging to some people, just like archery games in VR tend to do very well. But it seems like there’s just not enough here to really make you want to engage – there’s not even enough about this game to warrant a longer review.
Overall, Ashen Arrows is just another game. It can be fun to the right person, but for VR gamers who want substance – or those who spend their money on quality content – this is probably not for you. There’s better archery games – and definitely better genres than tower defense – for the VR gamer with taste.
Ashen Arrows, was reviewed on the Quest 3 after receiving a pre-release key.
