It wasn’t all that long ago that I reviewed another rogue-like action title, Leap of Fate, which closely resembles Kill to Collect, from developers Pieces Interactive. Unlike Leap of Fate, Kill to Collect is set in a dystopian apocalypse where only one remaining city exists in the world. This city has left it tough to get by unless you’re a mercenary killing machine that’s willing to do your dirty work for a price.
Neon Filled Scum
The biggest draw for me when I first opened up Kill to Collect was its bright neon-colored world. While I enjoyed the game visually, the setting was anything but bright and colorful. As mentioned earlier, Kill to Collect takes place in a location known as the Geoshelter Alpha, the last remaining city on Earth.
Because everyone gravitates to Geoshelter Alpha, you bump into all walks of life. Those fortunate enough to come from wealth live well above in luxury while those down on their luck scrapes by within the lower levels of the city.
It’s within the lower levels that the most problematic criminals reside, making most innocent stranded within a dog-eat-dog world. Though some would dream of raising the ranks and living well above the smog, players will find easy paydays among the crippling bottom sewers.
Mercenary For Hire
Players take on the role of a mercenary. With four characters to choose from the start, there is enough variation between them that should satisfy a gamer’s playstyle whether that be someone who is quick in melee or a strong tank-based character.
Essentially, players receive bounties and in order to receive the rewards, you must hunt and take out the criminal. This means going through countless floors and battling against a nice variety of enemies before reaching the end boss.
While each character has their own unique weapon and skill set, they do come with a few different attacks that may have a cooldown period after using. Likewise, after earning enough currency along the way, you can reward yourself with some weapons and enhancements as you go through the next few floors. Unfortunately, I found myself spending money with aspects that healed me rather than giving a boost in firepower.
Likewise, there wasn’t much to the story, but it felt like the developers attempted to make up for it with its other game modes such as daily challenges, a means to rank yourself above others on a leader board, or a more randomized floor progression campaign.
Git Gud And Die Trying
Much like Kill to Collect’s tagline “git gud and die trying”, combat could be a bit much. While mechanics were easy to understand, I found the restrictions on dodging became my downfall, furthermore, collecting resources that dropped on the ground was also the same key input for dodging thus I ended up forcing myself between attempting to pick up an item and risk using all my dodges during an intense fight which may ultimately help my demise or leave a desirable item until the firefight ended, again, something that could have helped my character from perishing.
Additionally, I rather enjoyed the luxury of knowing how many waves I would be up against during Leap of Fate. There are no indications as to how many enemies you’ll be facing in Kill to Collect, players could wipe out an entire floor just to have more enemies randomly pop up.
Anyone There?
Kill to Collect offers a couple different multiplayer cooperative modes outside of just the campaign such as the daily challenge and randomized floor mode known as Warzones. Each allows up to four players to join and go through the different floors, taking out enemies and earning some money along the way.
This all sounds good, right? Sadly, I couldn’t find anyone on to play a game. My attempts to find a match always resulted in the no games available screen. I was given a chance to create my own lobby for players to join, but after not being able to find a match after several attempts with each game mode, I felt creating my own lobby would have just been a waste of time.
Final Verdict
6/10
Kill to Collect is right about average for me. There are some details that could have been improved such as the story, but I can’t help but feel that this could be a decent game if there was more of a player base attached.
