Skull Horde is a daring roguelike, both innovating with hands-off gameplay and the fact you’re constantly on an escalating timer. Runs are decided on how fast you can ramp your army, and how long you spend exploring to do just that. The new Blood Feast content pack is available for free to help players race through the catacombs with aplomb.
In our original review of Skull Horde we marvelled at how the game manages to provide constant time pressure while also allowing method in the madness. Planning your army slots and recruiting the right units was vital, but so was sharp navigation and time management.
“Beyond just managing your minions, Skull Horde doubles-down on risk/reward with the Threat Level system. Every 30 seconds, from the moment you start a run, the difficulty increases.” Skull Horde Early Access Review.
With this focus on tight timings and escalating evil, the new Blood Feast pack is a welcome boon, allowing players to leech life and benefit from overhealing.
The main content of the Blood Feast pack includes:
- The Margrave — a leeching creature to restore health on hit as well as cast transfusion magic
- Unit Buffs — Dark Pack, Bat and Bloody Fangs are added to runs which add leech mechanics to existing units. Fatal Vigor then buffs their damage while they’re at full health for some sweet tanky synergy. The Bodkin Arrows for archers allow them to pierce targets, bypassing some of the high defence modifiers of enemies (I distinctly remember the large warriors in the gladiator pit being too tanky for their own good…)
- New Summons — Blood Golems can be amalgamated by overhealing units
- New Game Mode — Boss Rush is what it sounds like, a new game mode where you fight every boss back-to-back on sequential floors
For players worried the game’s time pressure isn’t for them, we go over the optional “Explorer Mode” in our review, which is an innovative way to change the way the game difficulty scales without straight up trivialising the experience.
Players can choose from the new units and items right away, and if you haven’t tested your mettle (and speed) in Skull horde yet you can pick up the game on Steam
