While I myself never grew up playing them, Beyblades were all the rage when I was a kid. The commercials were everywhere and, even if you didn’t play with them, you were bound to say “Let it rip!” just from pure osmosis. The style was iconic, it had a tie-in show, and it was something fun to do with everyone during recess or after school. Put the little plastic blade in the launcher, pull the tab, let it rip (as it were), and watch your blade battle another in a concave arena, aka a big bowl, until one of them flies out or stops spinning. That’s it, that’s the game. Simple, addicting, and fun to play again and again.
Two kids having an absolute blast playing Beyblade
That premise and that simple fun is exactly what Slayblade is all about. Released on Steam back on August 20th, Slaybalde is a short, simple experience with a gameplay loop that begs to be loaded up again and again, just like its inspiration. Similar as well to its inspiration, this game is all about putting together the perfect blade to battle other blades on your journey to the top, where you will eventually take on the finals to become “King of the Streets”.
In Slayblade you start your journey with a basic blade and some cash. Money can be used to purchase upgrade parts for your blade, either at the store or randomly at a gacha machine, to buy levels, or (most importantly) to enter battles. Each battle has a set price to enter, a bet. If you win you get your money back plus the bet, but if you lose you just spent [ X amount ] of dollars to lose. If you’re low on money, there is a way to earn some back by mowing the lawn, but that's on a timer so it’s extremely possible to softlock yourself due to losing too much money or overspending at a shop for parts. While this didn’t happen to me often, I did have to restart at least one run due to lack of funds.
With that said, each run is relatively short and can be done in a 15-20 minute sitting, so it isn’t the end of the world to restart one. Each new run you're dropped into a small, isometric city with the camera centered on your protagonist, a little skateboarding sprite. Move your mouse around the edges of the map to not only move your character around but also spin the map on an axis so you can see 360 degrees around the whole city. I found this map design to be an extremely clever way to fit multiple interactables in one small environment while also keeping the design language of the game brilliantly consistent. What I mean by that is the map navigation and the combat mechanics are strikingly similar, all revolving (heh) around spinning. It really is some elevated design. The entire game is gorgeously designed, as far as I’m concerned. The visual language of Slayblade is easily the strongest part of it, which is not to say anything detrimental about the rest of the game design and only to shine light on how truly gorgeous I think this map and the way it is utilized is.
Gameplay is relatively simple, like I said earlier. It isn’t as simple as Beyblades are in real life, as you simply spin a top in a dome and see who wins with those. No, in Slayblade you control the blade throughout the entire fight, which means you are using your mouse to literally spin your blade around the opponent, build up speed, hit their top, slow them down, and pick up power cubes (this game’s version of power-ups). I found this gameplay to be extremely intuitive and interesting. I’ve never played anything quite like this before, where I’m spinning my mouse in circles in an attempt to avoid all manner of hazards while striking my enemy. And yet playing it felt like second nature, I myself picking up on it with barely any tutorial to speak of.
While winning can feel immensely satisfying, on the flipside losing in this game feels soul crushing. Sometimes you will spend 20 of your 45 dollars on one match and when you lose, especially if you don’t know why you lost, it can really take the wind out of your sails. While I do think the battles are fun, there isn’t a lot of incentive to take risks because losing is such a detriment. The best strategy I found when playing was to consistently fight the lower level battles to make money until I built an over-powered blade that could win battles within the first few seconds before challenging anything above my level consistently. Not that the challenge wasn’t fun, but when the possibility of soft-locking your run was a result of that challenge I simply chose not to take it; which is too bad because I feel like there’s a lot of promise for more in-depth and longer battles here.
This, unfortunately, brings me to my main complaint of the game. There just doesn’t feel like much reason to be doing any of this. When you win a battle there isn’t much feedback, you simply win the round and then get kicked back to the city screen. Alternatively, in something like KuloNiku: Bowl Up, every single time you win a competition you are given a screen with a newspaper talking about your win. Now I’m not saying that I need a little newspaper every time I win a battle in Slayblade, but some sense of progression would be great. This extends further into the game as well, leaving much to be desired when beating the finals and, thus, the game. The final battle yields no prize, the final “cutscene” (if you can call it that) is just a series of still images with vague meme-like implications, and the result of a complete run is the ability to start it over again but with modifiers; ie. start with the ‘nuke’ upgrade part on your slayblade, make enemies smaller/bigger, fire on the field, a giant monster stepping on the field, etc. There aren’t even any unique opponents in the entire game, just more vague memes in the form of silly names; but no character art, no personality, nothing.
A screenshot from the "ending" of Slayblade. These aren't animated or narrated and progress only when you hold down the left mouse button.
Disappointed.
This word sums up my feelings on Slayblade. I started my playthrough of this game with stars in my eyes, so much so I even featured it on my top 15 demos from Steam’s June Next Fest article. Regrettably, this game simply did not meet my expectations. Slayblade is a truly unique and gorgeous experience, from the art to the music to the gameplay. It takes massive inspiration not only from Beyblade but also from consoles like the DS and Wii in wholly unique and interesting ways. With that said, I feel it falls short on delivering a complete experience that I could latch onto, including a lack of memorable characters, plot, and satisfying rewards for completing challenges. Unfortunately, this impacts the staying power of Slayblade, a game that has a great core but fails to back it up with anything meaningful.
**Disclosure: A key was provided for this review**