Forced - Initial Thoughts

About the Game (From the Steam Store Page)

Forced is a challenging one- to four-player co-op arcade action RPG with puzzle and tactical elements. You are cast as slaves in the toughest fantasy gladiator school of them all, condemned to fight to the death, all the while attempting to win your freedom. You will face deadly trials and huge creatures, but Balfus, your Spirit Mentor will guide you in your quest to break the chains of oppression.

Previous Playtime

3.5 hours

Expectations and Prior Experience

My friend Daniel and I will often play co-op games on the weekend, and since we have a scant few games in common, he bought me this one so we could go through the co-op campaign together. That didn't last very long. We'd gotten to near the end of the second level and the difficulty proved to be too much for us, so we moved on to other things.

I liked the game well enough, except for the part where I was forced to do things for these mysterious spirits. But that's just a story-level thing. The real game is all about manipulating switches and fighting puzzle-based boss battles, and that was fun when we were winning (what can I say, I'm not a very complicated person).

My big worry about this game is that it's going to be too difficult. It was hard enough on co-op, I can't even imagine how things will play out on single-player. Then again, it is supposed to scale with the number of players, so maybe the low-end of the scaling will be more my speed.

Puzzle games in general are tricky for me because I love to solve puzzles, but I hate to fail to solve puzzles. Whether I have a good time with Forced is going to depend a lot on whether or not it can mollify my hypocritical whimsy.