It has been a while already since the developers of Cyanide Studio released their game Blood Bowl: Death Zone. They self-describe the game as a 1 vs 1 game of football, violence, and mayhem. With the teams being taken from the Blood Bowl universe, players are faced with a complete chaos circus on the field. So, I decided to go out onto the field and check out what Cyanide Studio has created for us.

What do you do? Blood Bowl: Death zone is a competitive 1 vs 1 football game. You control 1 of the 14 teams, which are based on popular races from the Blood Bowl universe. During the game, the goal is to score as many touchdowns as possible. In single-player mode, the game offers 6 different leagues to complete, and of course, every team has their own star player with unique abilities.

In-game design: When you start playing your first game, I’m sure you will notice how beautifully designed the field is. They really took their time to give it a nice look, and they even added some fire. And when you are out there on the pitch, they really thought of everything, like they even made those commercial banners behind the endzone. Then there are the players, I love how they look. Just looking at them makes me wanna play the game. So it’s safe to say that the developers made a good choice with the graphical aspect of the game.
Leagues: Another thing about Blood Bowl: Death Zone that I really liked, is the league system. It basically feels like a promoting system where you will have to finish the previous league in order to advance to a better one, with the ultimate goal to finish first in the sixth and final league. Every league, more teams are joining and the difficulty increases which makes it a real challenge to get to the top and be victorious. I can imagine that it must be very satisfying to finish at the top.

Main menu: Where the game itself looks beautifully designed and finished, the developers probably gave the job to design the main menu to an incompetent intern. I won’t say it’s bad but with a game like this, it’s just a big disappointment. And I actually don’t really know what to say about it. It’s kind of a buzz killer. I hope they will fix this in future patches because it’s something that can be done easily and if they make it more like the in-game graphics, I’m 100% sure that new players and even players who already own the game will feel more invited to it.
Music: Another point where I had a ‘wtf what’s this’-moment, was the music. In the main menu, it’s just 1 simple tune played over and over again. And if you are wondering whether it is a good tune, well, even the Olympic Medal Ceremony theme on repeat would be better. So let’s quickly go to the actual in-game music oh wait… there isn’t. You hear a crowd cheering, you hear some punches and that’s about it. So like I suggested, turn on some weird music and it will be better and probably more fitting to the game then Blood Bowl: Death Zone itself has to offer.

Controls/tutorial: So, here we are with the bad points. Where the mixed points were already somewhat bad, let’s talk about the controls and the tutorial. So, the controls are really vague, you only need to click your mouse or something and start punching the enemies in order to gain the ball and click on the endzone. Sounds easy right? Well, it would be if they worked. Most of the time, they are bugging or are just leading their own life. When the controls are confusing or not working, most people will go and take a look at the tutorial and there is one. Unfortunately, it’s just not helping in any way. There is a list of stuff you need to click on and that’s about it. And maybe I’m just stupid but it’s something they really need to take a look at and preferably soon…
Punching around: The game is supposed to be a football game where punching the enemy should be a small deal. But it’s actually all about punching the enemy in the face and there’s actually one simple strategy. Punch all the opponens till all of them are injured except one and then make an easy touchdown. Repeat this a few times and you win. In my opinion, they should make the game a bit more about tactics instead of just slamming monsters to the ground.

CONLUSION

Score: 40%
If I’m being totally honest the game is a bit of a letdown. I started with somewhat high expectations cause usually these types of game are really fun, except for this one. I really hope that they fix the main menu, music and tutorial really fast in order to make the game more lovable to play. But I’m afraid it’s already too late for it and they better focus on making a better title next time. The game really has some good points tho so the basic is there and next time maybe they should just fire the intern 😉

Developer: Cyanide Studio Publisher: Bigben Interactive
Played on: PC
Steam game store link: Click here