HighRisers – Review

Our Rating: 5/10

In Highrisers, you assume command of four survivors stuck inside a building. They must collect raw materials not only to fix their chopper and flee, but also to craft firearms, barricades, and concoctions to fend off the growing zombie danger.
To effectively maintain safety and prevent the zombie attack, each survivor has a distinctive set of abilities. They also have a special skill tree that enables you to concentrate on either building, collecting, combat, science, or recovery.

Almost everything in your surroundings is collectible. From the start of the game, the zombie threat is very real. A nice pixel art style that is pleasing to the eye and a soundtrack that establishes the perfect mix of ambiance for the game accompany the gameplay.

Highrisers forces the gamer to select between preparing for survival and attempting to rebuild the chopper promptly. Both methods require a significant amount of time and assets. This could be partially offset by selecting the appropriate advantages in every skill tree.

What do I do??

There is no beginner guide or in-game description to help you when you start. And the game is punishingly challenging. Those seeking a challenge will have a treat.

Now let’s discuss what we thought succeeded and what could be improved. This game, firstly, needs a brief tutorial. Anything that discusses the dynamics and asset management will such great help. Micromanagement is a big part of this game after all. While this isn’t an awful creative decision in and of itself, the interface design and inventory management system tend to drain the fun out.

Each Highrisers protagonist has an inventory, and none of it is shared among the characters. There are no storage crates or a way to see the total number of items collected by all of your characters on a single screen. Worse, everything you make will show you how much of each item you’ll need.

Crafting and Skill Tree

It does not, nevertheless, indicate whether you have the needed quantity until you attempt to create it. This prevents the character from crafting anything else until the object is complete. This leads to an irritating gameplay cycle. You will repeatedly be switching between characters and inventory dumping in the hopes of finding assets to make a replacement or other objects. You will then hope to find sufficient items to complete the fortifications; or whatever item you’re working on before the game says you can no longer engage with it.

As each object, you craft needs an excess of assets and you have no means to collaboratively organize said assets, you now end up losing whatever assets you invested. The crafting and gathering methods simply feel incomplete and in need of some polishing. We also faced a few glitches that hampered our enjoyment. The object names and explanations for many of the map’s interactable objects were lacking.

Occasionally you’ll be forced into the skill tree amid battle to rank up, and you wouldn’t get out until you sort out which persona had an upgrade and spend it.
Although this isn’t a major issue, it can be aggravating when you’re escaping from a horde of zombies and you’re entangled in the screen due to the game’s restricted and ineffective inventory management interface.

Can we recommend this game?

You’ll also need to collect food to keep from going hungry. It’s the one gameplay mechanic that irritates the most; trying to collect supplies is more difficult than it appears because not only is there not sufficient food obtainable in the early stages of the game but there’s also no way of growing your food because you don’t have the advantages activated or access to the resources needed to do just that.

Furthermore, the food you do collect does not give a sufficient payback to justify your efforts. To summarize, all these issues are solvable, and to Solar Powered Game’s credit, two updates have already been out since the game’s July 15th release.

By any means, Highrisers is not a bad game. It’s currently out with some inefficient design choices. However, we believe that as more patches are built, it will mature and be a fully developed edition of the dev’s idea. Keep tabs on this game, and if it tickles your attention, it might just be worth your time!