Bloodless Review

Indie games have always been the place to have unlikely genres be melded together. The relatively recent Nine Sols, which marries the Souls genre (specifically Sekiro) with Metroidvanias, and Animal Well, that takes a non-combat approach to Metroidvanias. You also see many developers take the retro approach and try to innovate on classic genres like in Shovel Knight. We see a lot of creativity around the block of indie games.
 

 

Bloodless, developed by Point & Sheep and published by 3D Realms, is one of those unique games that comes across as if it is a Game Boy Color title with its presentation. I wanted to check this game out as soon as I saw the visuals, and it being a souls-like made me want to review it even more. Yeah, that’s right, much like Nine Sols, this game brings you a souls-like package in a pixel-perfect art style which causes me to get pseudo-nostalgia, despite my earliest console being a Nintendo DS lite.

Indie games like this generally don’t have a concrete story, but Bloodless brings you the story front and center and puts you in the middle of some trifle that has been going on for a while which is very pleasant to see. When you boot up Bloodless and hit New Game, you are shown some panning shots of sprites in various areas to sort of give you a hint at what is going on, but personally, I saw it as a way of showing off the pretty visuals of this game which I appreciate.

In Bloodless, you play Tomoe, a ronin returning to the districts of Bakugawa. She once lived here, and you soon find out that she had a name for herself as one of the deadliest samurais, nicknamed Tomoe the Slasher. However, she left during a troubled period, leading her to be seen in a negative light by her people.

After looking noting that she no longer needs a katana to fight, Tomoe is attacked by bandits soon after. She fights them off by disarming them rather than killing them. This gives off the vibe that she has sworn off killing for the sake of her own mental peace; very noble. It also leads into the gameplay, which is very parry-centric, sort of like Sekiro.

Upon your return, you see that things have only gotten worse since you’ve gone with bandits exiled from the city by a corrupt military regime. The invaders have banded together to take over this district and our protagonist finds herself compelled to make things right after seeing her hometown come to such disarray.
 

 

Tomoe intends to get around and protect herself through non-lethal combat. The core combat mechanics of Bloodless revolve around the idea of not harming your opponent. At a basic level, you can perform a counter by dashing into opponents, which acts as your primary attack. This parry must be timed with an enemy's attack, indicated by a white flash on the screen. Successfully countering avoids damage and usually disarms the opponent. Some enemies need to be parried multiple times and each successful parry takes them to the next phase. Also, when an enemy flashes red, you'll need to dodge instead, as these attacks can't be countered.

Getting the timing right is key, and Bloodless gives you plenty of tells for you to pick up on before you can parry. The enemies here are quite predictable once you have faced them a few times—which is good for a parry-focused game. You also get an audio and visual cue each time the enemy is about to start their attack.

Since your parry has you dashing towards your enemies, you also must worry about your positioning because Bloodless also puts certain obstacles in the fighting area to keep you on your toes. For example, in the earlier areas, certain walls are spiked off, so you generally want to be in the middle of the battlefield while in combat. It also helps to be in the middle, as enemies come at you from all directions.

You are not limited to just your dash counter either, you also have Ki attacks that attack your opponents’ energy and weaken them for you to disarm by dashing into them. So you do have some other options besides just straight-up parrying everything.

While our basic key attack is simply a punch animation, you do get others via the form of secret techniques. These are much sparser, of course, as you would expect, but you can learn techniques to amplify your Ki attacks and perform special moves with them. The first one you get is a much larger arc that can hit multiple enemies at once.
 

 

These powerful attacks consume Ki petals. You can recharge those by disarming and disabling enemies as you perform well in combat, so you need to get comfortable with parrying and performing Ki attacks to take full advantage of the Secret Techniques.

Since this is a combat-focused souls-like, you have your gourd, which holds tea to heal you when you take damage. Your basic tea leaves are plentiful in availability. You can brew tea at braziers, which act as save points as well as the place where you can upgrade your stats, change things around, and unlock new skills.

You also get some unique ingredients to brew different types of tea that can boost certain stats, like one that lets you have infinite stamina for a brief period. Although, at first, it replaces your healing tea when you brew teas with special effects, you get the option to keep both later.

If you manage to clear particularly difficult combat encounters, you can also pick up skill gems. Skill gems give passive benefits to your overall combat style and general improvements. A very easy one is, for instance, how quickly you can drink the tea you use to power up Tomoe. We can also set ourselves up to use any crests we've accumulated up to this point as well. Crests are items you can equip which you find and are rewarded for, such as side content, which will also benefit all the various things you can do in combat.
 

 

Now, alongside all of those challenging encounters, you'll, of course, be picking up currency. You can spend this gold on upgrades at the Tea House for all sorts of stuff, such as your max health, stamina, or key petals, allowing you to do more without having to stop and rest. All of that combines to make a combat system that has a fair bit of depth to it.

There’s a lot in the combat of Bloodless to get comfortable and mess around with and there are plenty of places to test things out. For example, you can backtrack to an area you had just been to to clear some more challenging fights.

The reward for that specific experience is a key to a locked-off section you would have passed earlier. This gave me access to a brand-new crest in the form of one that would allow me to sprint at a reduced cost to my stamina. This was huge, considering dashing, my primary means of disarming enemies, consumes stamina.

The map in Bloodless is quite open and it has some scale. It is very nice that it rewards those who enjoy the game enough to backtrack and explore. For those who love the combat like me, you also get optional combat scenarios in the dojo section of the Brazier where you will face off against hordes of enemies.

You don’t lose anything when you die; everything here is completely optional. The rewards aren’t too significant either, so you won’t feel forced to do them if you don’t want to; it’s only here for the fun of it which I really like.

There is more to exploring this map than just combat and nifty items. There are plenty of NPCs that you can interact with to get yourself immersed in the world. The dialogue here is lively, both in the main and side content. It is rather fun to see the little pixel characters get riled up about things.
 

 

Although the world has its charm, it doesn’t do anything too special with the story itself. It just gets the job done by supplementing the setting with some context. It won’t do anything to move you to tears or shock you; it's just there to be fun, and I never hated when the combat was spaced out with character interactions.

Visually, as I have briefly mentioned throughout this review, Bloodless is a treat. I love the way the colors are presented. You generally have one dominant color lighting up an area and the whole screen changes to a certain color during crucial scenes for added effect; that is so creative!

You also run into enemies who have a unique color of clothing to indicate that their moves are a little different from what you have seen before. It is simply a delight to see how Point & Sheep have chosen to work with the 8-bit style they have decided to work with.

The soundtrack is befitting of the era this game is set in, and it is impossibly high quality compared to the 8-bit presentation. This is how my mind imagines the music, say, a Gameboy Advanced title sounds in memory, even though it sounds a lot more retro-y.

Bloodless is a great indie title that is made with love. The difficulty is up there for a souls-like, but it’s fun to learn the combat mechanics and memorize the movements of enemies here, so I had a lot of fun. While this isn’t something I would recommend to casual gamers because of that steep learning curve, I highly recommend it for those who appreciate a stiff challenge.

 

Bloodless provides an engaging experience with challenging and fun combat, a badass elderly protagonist, an interesting premise that I enjoyed where her determination to keep a vow is at odds with all the violence around her, and some interesting and eccentric characters who provide a bit of comic relief to the otherwise tense atmosphere. You should check this game out if the visuals appeal to you and you are okay with a difficult combat system.
 

Ahnaf Tajwar
Editor, NoobFeed