War Rats is the brainchild of gaming industry artist turned indie game dev Brian “Wootusart” Murphy. War Rats takes you on the front lines of the Great Rat War against the TechnoRat army. This hilarious and gory 2-D side-scrolling shooter is set in a world that rats inhabit. Your goal is to lead your troops into battle and take back the land lost in Ratoirea from the TecnoRats, a singular consciousness consisting of cyborg rats hell bent on turning all flesh to metal. Inspired by games like “Kingdom: New Lands” and “Futurecop LAPD’s Precinct Assault Mode” (which is considered to be the first ever MOBA). War Rats takes the gory ’90s style and delivers a fun play loop with a lot of potential.
I can’t get into the details of War Rats without talking about the hand-drawn art. Brain “Wootusart” has an affinity for rats, and going through his Instagram page https://www.instagram.com/wootusart is populated with rats in different scenarios like controlling dinosaurs and living their best ratty lives. The level of detail of the art in the game brought me back to my younger days of sitting in front of my dad’s PC playing gory shoot’em ups! My mind is still blown that a single person drew all of the art, from the character design of each rat to the billowing smoke in the background; a truly astonishing feat! “Wootusart” decided to kick things up a notch by doing the coding, game design, and sound fx on his own. The only aspect of the game done by someone else is the music, and oh boy, does the music slap! Jamie Keen employs a heavy metal-driving soundtrack that brings the drama and intensity to bring Ratoirea to life.
Breaking down the gameplay and features of War Rats is pretty straightforward. The goal is to move your way through the battlefield, kill the scum metal-rat bastards and escort at least one of your troops into the enemy base. What seems like a simple task intensifies as you command your troops through a number of stages with changing terrain and enemies. War Rats starts like most games, guiding new players through the mechanics and win conditions, essentially putting players into a “test” level. Once you’ve finished the tutorial, you’ll have three difficulties to choose from: cheasy (easy), ratgular (normal), and hairy rat balls (hard). There’s also an option to turn on a modifier for their Iron Rat mode. with this mode toggled on, every time you die your rat starts back from level one, making the runs even more difficult! There are a total of eleven different stages, with varying degrees of difficulty for the enemy troops. I’ll admit that my campaign run was done on ratgular difficulty and at times I found myself banging my head on my desk trying to get past a level. However, my experience was pretty low in frustration. I’ll be going back and running the campaign on the hardest difficulty just to experience it. For my casual play-through, it took me a little over six hours to complete the campaign, but if you want to be sweaty about it, you could finish it in a couple of hours.
War Rats mixes a couple of different video game genre mechanics like rogue-like progression and a single lane to defend like in MOBAs. As you take on each stage, the player is limited to one life. If your rat comes to a bloody end, use the CHz (a currency gathered on your runs, the more you kill), to upgrade attributes that carry over after each death. And believe me… you’re going to die! Base building is crucial in having a successful campaign run. Build turrets, power-up shrines, and CHz pumpers to maximize your time on the battlefield. Don’t be like me and forget that you can call in additional troops, which is clutch as the enemy is driven back. Jump, dodge, and pew-pew through each level with 15 different weapons, throwable,s and rat badassery! More weapons and features, including multiplayer, are expected during the early access period. War Rats’ story is littered with hilarious quips, pun,s and rat balls… yes… rat balls! The music is a mixture of heavy guitar, bass and drums making for the perfect background music to eviscerate the TechnoRat scum.
It’s been a little over a week since the war to take back Ratoieria began, but Wootusart has been hard at work. One of my concerns was the lack of a roadmap. War Rats, being an early access launch, needed a road map for people to consider buying in to the early access, so I’m glad this has been somewhat addressed. We’ve got a road map, but no actual timeline for the implementation of the roadmap. The update that was released was a meaty one, or rather, a cheesy one. The update adds in three save slots for campaign runs, 35 achievements on STEAM, toggling friendly fire on and off, which to me adds to the difficulty of the game, a new starting weapon, a new gun, and a ton more! Other than some graphical stuttering in areas, mainly by the enemy base, and an issue picking up items over objects with menus, War Rats runs pretty smoothly and looks polished. To me, early access games are a buy “at your-own-risk,” however, some devs with early access games allow early adopters to be a part of the game’s development by directly suggesting features to be added. You can check out the demo for free on STEAM or purchase the early access build and updates for $12.
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