PLAYTEST IMPRESSIONS | Warden's Rising - This Industry Is A Nightmare

Okay so. Wardens Rising currently plays like Helldivers, you remember Helldivers? It was a Playstation 3 drop-in drop-out couch multiplayer videogame, with an emphasis on a Starship Troopers-like tone of military science fiction satire. You gotta kill some bugs, know what I mean?

Warden’s Rising is currently that, without any of the stuff that at makes Helldivers funny moment to moment. Getting crushed by your own troop transport, momentarily getting separated from other players on the map just as the area is swarmed with bugs. It has an aesthetic that’s like Disney trying to pull of Anime that I can only really call Overwatchification. There’s a palpable sense with every character design that they have some kind of Lore behind them in some developers head. 

I do not think anybody really needs to play Warden’s Rising right now, or potentially upon release. It doesn’t have any kind of direction that can reach out and grab you, and most likely is another video game in the long line of releases that will have multiplayer for a few months before it’s shuttered by the developer due to low-performing numbers. Is that mean, or is that simply where the game industry is now?

I heard recently that the new YouTube commerce market for playable footage of video games is now buy-in only. Whatever Warden’s Rising plays like, well, now they’ll have to pay YouTube let’s players to read stale copy about their game before release to really make any kind of word-of-mouth dent on how many people will have heard about it on release. What a time to make a video game. 

[Editor’s note: The EiC of startmenu played this game at Gamescom and was provided access to several codes to a very early access version of the game. It is still in development.]