Fantastic on all fronts, visuals, sound, music, gameplay. I will never forget the first time I closed a door and the music changed to sound as though it was coming through the door.

The Hard mode is fantastically made, actually feels like a completely planned out and hand designed second campaign that pushes the game's mechanic's to their limits without resorting to placing tons of beefier monsters.

Really makes you feel like the grim reaper.

deadbolt is a very goofy game. dark comedy game. you are a hitman murdering drug lords and telefragging vampires on toilets and standing like murderous goofy would. but actually playing the game is very hit or miss with very inconsistent ai and annoying layouts in buildings (especially in the middle). very rarely do i feel like i am playing the game correctly and mostly trying to bait enemies which don't have the ai to be baited. very trial and error. but the music always slippin and slappin. honestly this would be a better short film than a game, but then again i am a hater.

Deadbolt is a game I didn't even know existed until a few days ago when I got a Steam coupon for it for owning Risk of Rain. Deadbolt is another game by the Risk of Rain guys, so they gave out coupons to everyone who owned either for the respective other game, and it certainly worked on me this time :P . It's a fun but short game that was well worth the $5 I paid for it.

Deadbolt Is like a more action-focused Gunpoint, so it's a 2D, stealth-based action game but with a far heavier emphasis on combat and gunplay than Gunpoint (ironically enough). The plot is something like you're a kind of grim reaper-type hunting down unruly undeads for some unnamed candle-god thing, but it's not terribly important. Hunting the monsters is still pretty fun though, and it gives excuses for enemy types like vampires that come back to life until you break their phylacteries. All the guns don't feel exactly balanced, as I ended up using the scythe for most of it, but even then the game almost became a kind of puzzle on how I could manipulate the AI to allow me to use the scythe for like every level x3. You can't jump, but you can turn to smoke to dash through vents really quick, which makes outmaneuvering your enemies something that's always a fun trick. You DO die in one hit (generally) though, so you can't get tooo crazy with how you move x3

There are a dozen or so guns and like half a dozen melee weapons as well as a dozen or so enemy types, but the enemies can't pick up weapons lying around like you can. Most melee weapons can be thrown, as you aim both your gun and the melee throw with your mouse pointer and guns have an accuracy that is variable depending on how far you're aiming and how much you're moving. It's a really fun little system and even though I died a fair bit, going through the enemies again was always fun. You earn "souls" as a currency by completing achievements and beating missions, but all they do is unlock more weapons that you can start missions with. They don't unlock hard-passives or things like that, and given that weapons don't have much ammo, they really don't affect the game that much, for better or worse.

There are 30 or so missions, and I beat the game in about 4 or 5 hours, but it's apparently completable in under an hour if you're really good. Mission types aren't super varried, usually just either accessing "information" (i.e. an interaction point) often in a difficult place or eliminating all the enemies. Occasionally there's a gimmick like doing it in a certain amount of time or eliminating a boss character, but the bosses are either literally normal enemies but different looking or taken out just as easily as a normal enemy. It's more than serviceable for the fun combat and stealth stuff though.

Verdict: Recommended. This is a fun stealth-action game you can knock out in an evening, and the game grades you on stuff like time, accuracy, and head shots, so if you're someone who likes 5-staring things, this game has you covered for replaying levels in the most clever ways you can suss out.

He ran his fingers across the hard, dried oak. Cracks could be seen on its dark, dehydrated surface. It never rained here -- just an endless, cloudless, black night. A streetlamp hummed somberly, illuminating a metallic deadbolt with faint white light. Underneath, a brass handle. Slowly, he twisted it.

It's cold.

He pushed gently. Nothing moved. He tried again, harder this time. His other hand impatiently fidgeted an antique metal lighter in his trench pocket. Peering through dark gap in-between the frames, he saw the lock jam the large chunk of wood in place.

Stepping back for a brief moment, he analyzed the estate.

It was a multi-story penthouse. Geometric and unsightly. Walls were crassly painted with bone-white, revealing underneath red-brown brick and dull cement. Though florescent lights were visible from the outside, it was dead quiet.

In the distance, squares and rectangles split the sky like unadorned monoliths.

He was looking for a vampire -- Sir Stela from the family of the same name, who led co-led the 1000 Year Royals along with Madame Stela. Supposedly, the Candles believed him to have information regarding the production of Ash, an unknown new drug abused by the Undead. Yet, through his own investigation, he believed that there was more to it than merely a high.

The silent night was shredded by a loud crack from the upper floor of the penthouse.

He let go of the lighter, and drew a Smith & Wesson Model 30 from his inner left pocket. It chambered only six .32 caliber rounds, but it would have to do for now. He banged on the door with a curled fist, splintering pieces off the frame, further disturbing the dead night. A grunt, then footsteps could be heard approaching the door. The sounds were hollow. Heavy. Rattling. And then -- a click.

As the door pried open, he pulled the trigger lightly, cocking the hammer.

As the wood groaned against its hinges, a gaunt, skeletal figure was swiftly met with smooth iron in his jaw.

And as the light poured out from within, so did shards of bone and lead, splaying across the doorstep and hallway with withered, black blood painting the dried wooden frame.

Cold air flooded the penthouse -- and the deadbolt's steel body continued to shine in the lifeless luminescence.

I really want to like this game. Made by such a small team it does very well. Art, music, and atmosphere are all there. My main problem is its gameplay. With its 1 hp mechanic it becomes extremely tedious and repetitive. I do like games with this same mechanic but I feel as though Deadbolt does it with more tedium as it’s slower than similar games Hotline Miami, Celeste, Ghostrunner etc. These deaths have more ‘weight’ than in those games. Deadbolt is just a slower paced game and it suffers for it.

Certain levels have unclear objectives and major difficulty spikes (Lux in tenebris 2-3) when the objective changes to ‘kill all undead’ whilst there are no undead in the level I had no idea that meant dancing vampires because how could I?

I got this when it came out and trying to play through this has pretty much become an annual tradition, i usually get through one or two missions before becoming frustrated and quitting. But this was the last time, if it takes you seven years to get half-way through a 6 hour game then clearly you aren't enjoying it.

It's just not fun and i don't think the one-hit kill style works here. In something like Hotline Miami it works because of how fast and frenetic it is and how relatively short the levels are, in this levels can take 5 minutes and the pacing is slow which makes it insanely frustrating when you fuck up and die because an enemy hid in the shadows or took one more round than usual and you ran out of ammo. A checkpoint per level would have made it more tolerable.

I've only completed the main story. I haven't done any of the community content or most of the achievements but I enjoyed this game a lot. The aesthetic and music help set the tone of the game.

It often gives multiple ways to beat a level.

The story is mostly vague but I like the small lore there is.