V-Hunter Puzzler DX

From Buffy to Blade to Van Helsing, vampire hunting sure does look cool. I mean, it also looks insanely dangerous and, let’s be honest, your life expectancy is probably pretty short, but it still looks like a lot of fun. The new game V-Hunter Puzzler DX distills that fun into a simple yet monstrously challenging strategy game where the goal is to hunt down and slay the dungeon’s many vampires. It may not have the high school melodrama of Buffy or the gore of Blade, but this vampire hunter is definitely up to the task. Here is my review of V-Hunter Puzzler DX.

Grab your favorite stake and trench coat, because you are the titular V-Hunter, the go-to guy when your local dungeon has a nasty vampire infestation. This is a fairly straight-forward puzzle game where the goal of each stage is to eliminate the rats, skeletons, mummies, witches and more supernatural creatures through turn-based combat. We start out simple, with only one or two types of villains, but we’ll eventually have to go up against a screen full of menacing monsters.

Speaking of things that are simple, let’s talk about the gameplay. The combat is tied to remembering how your enemies will act. A rat, for example, will attack adjacent squares every three turns, which gives you some time to sneak around and attack without fear of retaliation. The flying demons also act every three turns, however, they require two strikes and will chase down the V-Hunter and attack if he’s adjacent. All fifteen types of bad guys have their own turn-based conditions, something you’re going to need to keep track of if you hope to clear out the vampire nests.

The good news is that the V-Hunter will find a number of items that will help defeat the undead horde. The most common item is the holy water, which will add an extra heart to your life bar. This is a must when dealing with enemies that leave a poisonous path. Another useful item is the gun, which will allow you to take out enemies at a much longer range. This is crucial for those times when sneaking up on the bad guy is not an option. You’ll also need to lay down dynamite and even stop time if you want to get an upper-hand on those pesky vampires.

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When I lay it out like that, V-Hunter Puzzler DX sounds easy. Just outrun the bad guys and use the items to your advantage, how hard can that be? Where this game really cranks up the difficulty is when you’re dealing with multiple types of monsters at once. You’ll suddenly need to remember four or five enemy attacks at once, which means carefully choosing your steps and even the order of elimination. Throw in some of the tougher enemies (the type that can move multiple times and target bigger swaths of the board) and the game will suddenly become a lot more challenging, forcing you to replay the stage dozens of times in hopes of finding the right combination of moves.

Sensing that some of these tougher stages may become frustrating, the developer has wisely added a rewind button that will let you reverse your mistakes. This is especially key for learning the basics of the game, since it allows you to freely experiment without worrying too much about the consequences. It’s the kind of functionality that you always want from this type of puzzle game, but you don’t always get. It feels like developer Yatch Studios has thought of everything.

Visually, V-Hunter Puzzler DX is nothing special. We’re treated to a simple throwback aesthetic that mimics the 8-bit games that I grew up with. It’s fun seeing the different types of enemies, though they are all pretty simple and don’t have a lot of moves or animations. The backgrounds are even more basic, usually consisting of differently colored tiles. It’s cool seeing all of the different types of monsters in some of the larger stages, but it’s not because of the amazing visuals. They get the job done, which is sometimes all you need from a puzzle game.

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On that note, as a puzzle game, V-Hunter is maybe a bit too simplistic for its own good. Like I said, it definitely gets challenging towards the end, but it could have offered an extra layer of depth with more moves and items. This is one of those games where most of the sixty stages are too simple, with only a handful of them truly being difficult. It would have been nice to see more done to keep those easier levels from feeling like unnecessary filler. If a dungeon or vampire next has fifteen stages, only two or three of them are actually memorable. That’s disappointing.

Still, V-Hunter Puzzler DX really excels when it fills the screen full of dangerous monsters. Even with all the filler, those handful of great stages are truly memorable, and they are worth the price of admission all by themselves. It may not be the best vampire or puzzle game, but V-Hunter Puzzler DX is a solid debut from Yatch Studios and a strategy game worth checking out.