Poncle Presents is back with a new game under its publishing label, and this time it’s something that has taken up an uncomfortable amount of my time in the past week.
If you’ve ever wondered to yourself what it would be like if you took the head pieces from LEGO minifigures, made them a thousand times creepier, and set them up in such a way that you got to blast them in the face with dozens of different bullets, you’d get Kill the Brickman.
It’s the latest release from Doonutsaur, an indie developer known for incremental games with occasionally unsettling atmospheres. It’s also published by Poncle’s new publishing division, the developer you may know from the 2022 bullet heaven hit, Vampire Survivors. And much like that game, Kill the Brickman has a similar ethos of taking a simple idea and making it intoxicating.
In Kill the Brickman, you load up different kinds of bullets into a revolver with the aim of using them to eliminate various enemies (the titular “Brickmen”) in a turn-based battle.
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Each bullet has different properties you can assign, such as Clone, which duplicates your bullet upon hitting an enemy, Corrode, which deals additional damage over several turns, and Explode, which deals damage over a certain area when hitting enemies. You’re also given different revolver clips to load the bullets into, which add new effects to each shot you take. These different damage types also correlate with enemies that have different behaviour types, and it becomes a matter of adapting how you set up each round to the possible enemy attacks that can occur.
At the end of each round, you get to go to the shop to upgrade your clips, buy new bullets, and activate new missions which can help or hurt your efforts in the long-run. Altogether, it means you’re never able to see the same run twice as the variety in enemies, bullets, and missions gives the game a huge degree of randomness.
Essentially, it’s a game that encourages you to experiment with different loadouts and setups. With the various different clips, effects, and damages, you actually have a load of different ways to tackle each level. Because the bullets you’re given each turn are random, it also becomes a case of adapting to the cards you’re dealt, and ensuring that you’re well-equipped for the next encounter.
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Stages are made up of many different squares, some of which are occupied by the Brickmen. Typically, the objective of each level is to eliminate a certain number of them, and sometimes having to kill special enemy types as well. So, it becomes a matter of targeting the enemies that you need to kill as part of the objective, while also removing any enemy Brickmen who are also targeting you.
One thing about Kill the Brickman that can’t be understated is just how creepy it is once you get beneath the surface. The titular Brickmen are pretty horrifying, uncanny creatures. I mean, they’re square blocks with human faces on them, and some of those faces look pretty evil. On paper, this game doesn’t need to be as creepy as it is. And yet, it really helps to deliver . So, yeah, you can understand why it might be a little unsettling.
Kill the Brickman is tricky to learn from the beginning. There are many different UI elements and visual signposts to learn at the start, and the game doesn’t do a great job at communicating this outside of the tutorial. You’ll definitely be spending your first few runs dying to easily avoidable attacks, simply because you didn’t fully understand how a certain mechanic or system worked.
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Once it clicks for you though, Kill the Brickman is a pretty awesome time. Its roguelike nature means each run is different from the last one, and you slowly get better at it as time goes on. Once you get to grips with the different types of attacks, and learn the best way through the upgrade path, it becomes quite an interesting experience.
With that being said, I also found controller support to be a little awkward. There were certain points where Kill the Brickman wouldn’t even register my button presses, and I had to use the mouse to select certain actions (or hit the touchscreen when I was playing on Steam Deck). Hopefully this is something Doonutsaur can refine in patches, because the game is a decent casual couch game too and would be suitable for players who want to kick back with a gamepad. Still, until this gets remedied, it would be best played using a mouse.
Given its relatively small scope but simple and fun premise, I can’t find much to fault about Kill the Brickman. If you’re aching for a new roguelike to play, and you’re on board with Poncle’s whole shtick by now, it’s a genuinely fun time that can easily fill the time you spend on your afternoon breaks.
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Pros: Fun roguelike mechanics, decent progression, great execution of simple idea
Cons: Confusing to learn at first, some difficulty with controls
For fans of: Vampire Survivors, Darkest Dungeon, Wargroove
8/10: Excellent
Kill the Brickman is out on 21st August on PC (version tested). A review code was provided by the publisher. Read a guide to our review scores here.
Topics: Indie Games, Reviews