Instead of playing a hero fighting off monsters. You are the monster that is removing armies from your forest. Quite an interesting take running around as a large cat destroying forts and anything else that moves.

In Monster Run: Downfall of the Empire there are two game modes. Nine lives mode that autosaves and three live modes where you can choose to save or reload. After playing a couple of times I ended up preferring nine lives. With three lives and reloading a save, you end up just treating the first two lives like they don’t matter much.

With nine lives I tended to play a bit more tactfully. Using any depth as an opportunity to go down the other side of the map to gain some levels. You can also get more lives while playing as well.

For most of the time I played however I ended up just going with the option to save when I wanted and reloaded that save as needed with three lives. This ended up coming quite in handy for learning the basics of the game.

The game has a tutorial stage where you can see how some of the basics of things work. I rather liked how most objects in the game can be destroyed. There is also physics so you can send derby and objects flying and killing enemies that are attacking you.

The controls in this game took a little getting used to. You don’t use the mouse at all. Instead, I'd be using the keys J and K for my melee attacks. I ended up spending a little time in the tutorial stage just to get used to a non-standard setup.

There was one massive critical thing I either did not notice right away or the game just did not point out well enough. How to get health back. There are these tinny foods that can be dropped on the ground from containers. Along with some trees having fruits in them. If you eat them, you gain some health. Once I realized this this game became quite easy. While some foods are bigger so many are easy to overlook until you know what to look for.

The early game has two different paths you can go down. You are not locked into a choice. Many times, when I get killed trying to clear out one area, I'll go down the other path for some easy encounters and to gain more levels.

Once you defeat an area you can’t re-enter it. Thankfully they give you a choice once you meet the objectives like destroying all buildings or killing everyone when you want to progress forward. I use those times to finish off any stragglers for further experience. Along with going around picking up any food I might have missed if I'm not in full health. As your current health carries over to the next area you end up picking.

Each time you level up you are given a random choice of skills to choose from. You can burn an upgrade point to reroll if none of them are desirable. I rather liked the option to reserve a skill upgrade until you want to buy it. This made it easy to ensure I didn't have to make any hard choices in picking something I wanted and having to wait to get it at random again. I could just save it for later.

While I was kind of all over the place with what I ended up picking. I usually went heavy on health and armor. Followed by upgrading my damage abilities. I rather loved fire breath for taking down ranged attacks like towers or archers.

There were many other spells to choose from. I could cause certain enemies to flee when they become terrified of me. Which was great when dealing with heavily fortified locations that would have been quite a nightmare to take on without some of the enemies losing their nerves and running from me. Just so I could hunt them down later deep in the woods and finish them off.

A big part of this game is just getting killed. I swear on every death I'd have a new Steam achievement popping up. Almost like the game was mocking for me getting killed. Most of them were quite funny to read while others were a bit on the noise about getting killed yet again.

Many times, it was quite fun just to rush forward and unload on large gatherings taking out as many as I could. That would usually result in heavy health loss from running out of stamina, getting stunned, and getting hit with bleeding effects. Along with just getting murdered by ranged attackers who survived my rush on them.

The game is far better played with a bit of tactics involved. Baiting enemies out of their strongholds. Fire breathing down attack towers and then retreating. Along with ensuring you are resting enough to have enough stamina to attack as needed. For the most part, I'd attack and then retreat.

Once in a while, the game would even toss some terrain situations at you that made you take things a bit slower. Since you can only attack left or right in front of you. It made these sideways tunnels far more channeling than expected. Even more so when ranged enemies can attack at a diagonal.

While in other maps there were swamps that crossing in the water would slow down your movement. There was even some water around a fort making a front-facing attack on that position quite a costly one to take on. With how much crossing water would slow you down.

Outdoor maps gave me quite a massive amount of area to use to my advantage once I had some of it cleared. While indoor areas I had to be far more careful since I had much less space to move around in.

There were even spawn points that would spawn further enemies if I did not destroy them. Sometimes giving me a bit of a surprise if I was resting for stamina or backtracking looking for food to find someone still willing to fight me.

Final Thoughts

For the most part, it was quite a chill game allowing you to play that desire of being the monster that attacks those who dare enter into your forest. Instead of the other way around of playing a hero attacking a creature that was just protecting its homelands.

Information

Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Monster Run: Downfall of the Empire.

Disclosure. A review copy of the game was received for free.