Tomb Hunter Review

The Mighty Throwing Sword!

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Tomb hunter review

Now I don’t have the body or the flex ability of Lara croft. But I will put on my sexiest clothes and raid the shit out of this tomb!
It is not often that I take to reviewing games that came out years ago. Sure sometimes it happens here on the blog, but that is usually because accessibility has been added to an old game. In this case it is because Tomb Hunter is now free.
Tomb hunter was released back in 2018, and to be honest it never really crossed my radar; so as far as I remember I never even considered reviewing it. It is now 2022, and new games to review are few and far between. Oh And it is free now, and who can say know to free.

Info

• Game: Tomb Hunter.
• Platform: PC.
• Released: Made free August 2022, Originally Released way back when.
• Developed by: Masonasons and NS studios.
• Available from: masonasons.me.

The Game

For those of you like me who had never heard of this game. It is a side Scrolling game in which you play a character who I believe is called Fredrick. You run, jump, climb and fight your way through 10 tombs to reach the end. I say I believe the name is Alex because honestly it mentioned it at the start of the game and that is literally all the story we get.
The aim of each level is to collect a scroll. Once you get that or in a few random cases another item, you are then able to get through the level portal at the end. For the most part the scroll isn’t hard to find. you usually stumble across it on the travels through each level. The real challenge are the enemies and obstacles you come across.
This game has 30 levels that really vary on difficulty and you have a range of weapons you can collect to face down the enemies you will come face to face with. So lets talk about a few things more in depth.

Controls

Some of the controls I am not a fan of, but lets go through them.
Moving with the arrows works how you would expect, simply Hold control to run. This is annoying when you are holding control, because it also means you are also missing things from text, but hey can’t have everything right?
You cycle through your weapons with 1 through 5 and use S to fire the weapon. This is weird for a number of reasons. First because you press shift s to check how many of the selected weapon you have remaining. This can be annoying when you are on the run trying to check your mines…only to place it down and run over it. Secondly even though you have time bombs and a robot helper through out the game, these don’t count as weapons so you have to use them out of the inventory. also once you have a robot helper out you can’t use your other weapons for reasons never explained.
P will use a health potion…while again…shift P will check how many are left. Honestly this would have been much smoother if checking remaining potions and weapons was completely different keys.
Press I to open the inventory. you can also cycle through your inventory with tab.
Holding shift and an arrow key will scan in that direction. This is Helpful when first navigating the different levels.
Alt and a direction will turn you to face that direction with out moving. This is helpful if you want to see what is in a certain direction when you are on a ledge or near a hazard.
D to use the key. I don’t know why this needed to be d and not enter like most of the other items that aren’t your main 5 weapons, but we need some reason to go back and look at the read me right?
Honestly with a few simple changes this could have worked, but sadly the above issues kept coming up for me through out my play through.

Navigation

The navigation in this game is actually pretty good. When moving through the various levels you can walk or run. Some obstacles like certain pits are to wide to jump if you are just walking so you do have to get a running start.
On top of the speeds you also have a camera. Pressing G and holding it then using the arrows allows you to look at your surroundings with out moving. holding shift and pressing an arrow allows you to scan in that direction to see what is coming up.
The scanning was super useful, to be able to scan quickly and see what enemies, items or hazards were in your way was fantastic.
You could even scan while using the camera, so you could move to another level with the camera and scan to see what you were facing.

weapons.

I really need to talk about the weapons in this game. I have a love hate relationship with them so we need to discuss.
The available weapons in this game are a sword, rocks, mines, time bombs, Molotov cocktails, arrows and a robot. So lets talk about each of these and hopefully you will understand why I both like and hate the weapons.
Also keep in mind almost every enemy in the game can be 1 hit killed by every weapon here. The only exception is that certain things have to be killed with a specific weapon, also the final boss you can’t 1 hit kill.

Sword: The sword works literally nothing like how you would think a sword can work. You throw it like a fucking ninja star and if you have a few enemies close together it can hit them all. It is also a single use item so you have to keep collecting swords.
Why this wasn’t treated like an actual sword with a short range but not single use I don’t know. But it is 1 of the best weapons in the game so I guess yay throwing swords.

Mine: so the mine actually does function how you might think. use a mine and it gets placed 2 tiles a head of where you are standing. If you or any enemy steps on it, it explodes.
This and the sword are basically the best weapons. When combined together you rarely need the others.

rock: pointless!
It has a range slightly longer then the sword but not as far as the arrows, doesn’t have the multi kill effect of the sword so really all it has going for it is that in the store is cheaper to get more of them.

The arrow just like the sword functionally doesn’t work how you think it would. You don’t need a bow just throw the arrows.
These have a much longer range, so they do have an advantage, but they can only hit 1 enemy. The sword is still better if you have plenty of them.

Molotov cocktails: These have a good range and do function as expected. You toss them and they explode enemies. the down side to these is when you do use them they put a fire hazard where they land, so why you’d use them over other weapons is beyond me.

Time bombs: These are bombs that when you place them they count down and explode when the time runs out…yes just like a time bomb. they have a range of effect, so you have to move away a certain distance once you place them. The down side is they can only be found in 1 level, and they have only 1 use in the game.
So I don’t know, yay for these being a thing.

Shooty robot, that might not be its name but fuck it I am sticking with it. This is a robot that shoots things.
In 1 level you can get robot parts, and if you get enough in the final level you can make a robot that shoots things. On the plus side it never runs out of ammo. On the down side you can’t use any other weapon while its out…for no apparent reason; also it is slow so you do have to keep stopping to let it catch up.

Over all most of the weapons are useless, or if not useless then better options exist. however in a game that basically is centered around you collecting consumables you usually do end up using them.
I get This isn’t a bad system, one which forces you to use everything. but after a while you do build up gold and such. so if your like me, you very rarely bother using the rocks or even arrows. My molotov cocktails just got sold for gold so I could by more of the useful and other fun stuff.

Story and shop

2 things that I don’t have much to say about so they got put under the same heading.
I am including this so I can bitch about this. We start the game off with a bit of text giving us a hint at the existence of a story. after that we never got this again. If you are going to tease a story, put one in. a bit of story between each level, I had story blue balls by the end, and that pissed me off!
You can press z to open the shop, Here you can buy various items. Some levels you can buy certain items. but you better check at the start of the level. cause some times you can’t buy it later.

Bugs

Had I paid money for this game the bugs would have driven me up the wall. I often had issues with the shop not displaying items when it should. This is especially frustrating when that item is needed for the level.
the game would some times just crash for no reason, and on 1 or 2 occasions the game would just lock up and I would have to close it and start that level again.
These become way worse after you complete the game and the cheat menu is unlocked. Once I did that my game felt the need to crash so often I gave up on playing it any more.

Random Items

As you play through the game you will be able to collect various items that are not weapons. Many of these are limited or single use things. Things like the bucket proved to be more of an annoying thing.
The bucket has a single use in just one level of this game, you use it to put out a fire. yet you can’t use it to put out the fire from a Molotov. But you need to pick up the bucket to advance the game in the level before it is used.
Likewise the parachute has limited levels in which it can be used. despite several places it could be fun if not super useful to use it. If you are going to give me a parachute let me jump off high things and use it for fuck sake!
As mentioned above, you also have items like keys which you get much later in the game, and you forget the 1 time it is mentioned in the read me on how to use them.

all together

Honestly if I had paid for this game I would probably be pissed off right about now! This game isn’t all that long. 30 levels but I would describe most as pretty straight forward. a few challenges a long the way for sure. but honestly nothing spectacular.
I think this game has some really cool features and stuff I really like. As I said above, some challenges do exist, and I enjoyed working out some of the puzzles and how to beat certain levels. However as someone who has played several side-scrollers in the past, it isn’t something I would describe as super tough.
Also its replay value is almost non existent and the fact that once the game is beaten once it seems to get very much more likely to crash, not something I like in my games.
Over all if you are looking for something to do for a minute this game is fun. But it is nothing special.

Final thoughts and rating

if you are in to side scrollers, sure check it out, you can have some fun. Especially if you are a more casual gamer you will probably take longer than I did to beat this so you may get more out of it than I did. Also it is free. you can’t argue with free.
However if you are a hardcore gamer who has played plenty of side-scrollers, you’re probably not going to get much out of this. A bit of fun but only for a short time.
7 out of 10.

Absent Game demo

Now I could explain to you why this game doesn’t have a audio game demo, but that would be no fun. So here is a made up story as to why I didn’t do it.

Fade in, night, A lone hansom Man with no beard but long hair sits on the edge of his bed sipping a freshly made Pina Colada.
He thinks to himself, dam that is a nice drink, I can’t wait to drink more of these during the third BSG singing competition in December. Oops others aren’t meant to know that yet, oh well guess cats out of the bag.
As he sips his drink he slowly sets up a microphone, He knows that the dead line is getting closer and that game demo isn’t going to record itself.
Suddenly a loud crash can be heard and 2 men smash in through the window. The lone man leaps to his feet, drink held in 1 hand while the other grabs one end of his wired headset cable. He is ready for a fight and he won’t spill his drink.

Wait is this a script or a story. you know what the thread isn’t important. Just know that he kicks both asses all while drinking is fruity cocktail. But in the fight the headset is damage, it is replaced just in time for the next stream, but not soon enough for a game demo for this article.

Conclusion

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