DEADBOLT’s lead character knows how to have a nice Saturday night. Come home, spin up your favorite vinyl, pour yourself a drink and sit in your comfy chair as you gaze into the fireplace, maybe talk to it a little bit. Or more specifically receive missions from it…missions in which you are ordered to dispatch of the resident undead, their drugs, and their leaders using whatever means necessary. DEADBOLT will pit you up against everything from zombies, to vampires, to demons, all of which can be dispatched with varying degrees of stealth.
You’re going to hear a lot of people throwing around the name “Hotline Miami” when talking about this game. It’s easy to see where those inspirations might lie. DEADBOLT features a similar (although original) soundtrack, as well as a main character who is killed in a single hit and can retry a level at the drop of a hat. Where I most see the similarities though is in how the game handles stealth. Killing enemies is required, but will also very frequently blow your cover. Most of the time using weapons that emit any noise will alert everyone in the area to your presence and suddenly the game is less about hiding and more about surviving the ensuing firefight.
DEADBOLT struggles to live up to the legacy of the games that clearly inspired it. While the level perspective and controls mirror Gunpoint, a lot of that game’s charm came from the snappy dialogue, the unique jumping controls, and the ability to hack into systems to mess with your enemies. None of that is present in DEADBOLT, the writing is light and uninspired, and the stealth mechanics never really evolve beyond your ability to flick light switches, land headshots, and climb into vents.
While I found that early on I was having fun with the game the difficulty began to ramp considerably in the second half, and eventually I found myself more frustrated than amused. Even in the game’s most crushing moments you’ll still find a lot of satisfaction in finishing a challenging level but there’s little things that may hinder your enjoyment on the way there.
For starters the game’s AI is relatively unreliable. Sometimes enemies see you, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes attacking someone with a silenced weapon alerts the whole floor above you, sometimes no one will have any idea that you did anything. I found that a lot of the brute zombies in the game’s first section can be dispatched with a few solid blows from a hammer, but I also found that sometimes they would be able to raise their guns between strikes and blow me away. The issue is consistency, sometimes I could take them out, other times I couldn’t, and often times I wasn’t able to discern why it worked one way or another.
There’s no way to know when an enemy can see or hear you without trial and error, and a lot of times that trial and error will produce inconsistent results. I can forgive unreliable mechanics and unpredictable AI but not in a game that asks for pitch perfect precision from me. A better HUD and some technical polish would have gone a long way in making the hybrid-stealth gameplay feel more solid for me.
As you finish levels you’ll earn currency that you can spend down at the docks to upgrade your array of weapons. Here’s the best tip that I can give you: save up for the silenced shotgun. It’s debatable how “silent” the AI actually finds it to be, but it will give you enough punch to take out enemies later in the game while still keeping a somewhat low profile. I thought the scythe sounded cool and its purchase has been nothing but an endless source of regret. There’s nothing to be earned by replaying missions so make your few upgrade choices really count.
What the game lacks in combat and stealth options it does make up for in mission variety. A good portion of the missions simply ask that you “kill everyone” but there’s also plenty of opportunities to destroy property or intercept valuable information. Perhaps the biggest highlight comes in the form of the game’s boss levels that will have you going after specific enemies some of which have very unique ways in which they must be dispatched.
While not quite adding up to the sum of its parts DEADBOLT is still an enjoyable few hours and if you find yourself really digging it there’s a map editor along with plenty of user made content to keep you busy. The game’s creators are the same team behind Risk of Rain, a title that had no shortage of excellent support after release. If you’re up for a challenge there’s probably something to like here.
