Developer: 10tons Ltd
Publisher: 10tons Ltd
Platform: PC
Review copy purchased
Tesla vs Lovecraft has all the things you want out of a real arcade-y shooter: hundreds of enemies on screen, fast firing weapons and lots of upgrades. It doesn’t really have a story as much as it has a premise that is as simple as it is brilliant. What if the myth of the titular characters were true: Tesla having access to mysterious and strange electric devices no one has ever seen and Lovecraft actually being in communion with the eldritch nightmares he wrote about in his novellas.
You play as Nikola Tesla, who is on a quest to stop H.P Lovecraft from swarming the world with the spawn of the Great Old Ones. Moving from mission to mission on a map that is supposed to be Arkham, each level is a different arena where all manner of Lovecraftian beasties are spawned in great hordes for you to tackle. You square off against everything from Deep Ones to the horrid Shoggoths that come spawning out of portals around the map. Anyone who has played the previous games by the developer 10tons will recognize a lot from titles like Crimsonland and Neon Chrome. You have all manners of conventional weapons like Tommy guns and revolvers, as well as more esoteric stuff like Tesla rifles and mech suits to aid you.
The mech suit is an interesting mechanic as you start each level with the suit for a few seconds before it blows up, after which you need to scavenge the arena for the parts to put it together again for another moment of overpowered chain-gun murder-fest before the thing breaks down and the cycle repeats. Otherwise, the game is very similar to Crimsonland and anyone who has played and liked that one will probably like Tesla vs Lovecraft as well. As your enemies fall in the hundreds around you, you level up and gain the ability to pick one of two perks, things like faster movement speed or an extra barrel on your gun to shoot even more bullets at any given time. The number of perks is limited at first, but as you progress through the “story”, you unlock new weapons and perks.
Moment to moment gameplay, like many other games of this ilk, revolves around circle strafing and dealing with large mobs in an efficient way. Aside from weapons, abilities also drop on the map and they are limited use special weapons or defences, like a special lightning bolt that shoots out and explodes in a mob, or a pulse shield that will push enemies back. In later levels, the key to success is managing the limited number of teleports that you have. It is essential to know when you need to jump through a wall, over a gap or just over the mob itself and not get greedy and end up stuck in the middle of the slimy embrace of a Shoggoth. The teleports recharge over time, but the time is long enough that your demise will undoubtedly be caused by a bad teleport more than once.
Tesla vs Lovecraft is a hard game, but it does a great job of easing you into it little by little. At first, I thought it was way too easy and I didn’t meet with much resistance at all. I soon learned that the game difficulty ramps up drastically when you advance to the Aether and Eldritch planes (basically the medium and hard difficulties with a little different texturing and lighting). Not only do the enemies get tougher and more numerous, new mechanics are introduced as well as you progress and, little by little, you are juggling more and more. It works fantastically in introducing both difficulty and complexity to the player.
The thing that Tesla vs Lovecraft does really well, compared to similar titles, is the upgrades and perks. You constantly unlock new perks and abilities to use in the arenas and the more you kill of a particular kind of enemy the more damage bonuses you are granted against that type. Later in the game you also start earning Aether Crystals that are used to permanently upgrade Tesla’s abilities, like giving him an extra teleport or mech durability so there is enough of a thread to pull you along for the duration of the game, which is important in these kinds of games.
The biggest issue with Tesla vs Lovecraft is variety. The monsters largely behave in a similar manner, run towards and swarm you to death. The weapons also feel a bit too similar at times with many different variations of shotguns and machine guns, basically. Some, like the revolver, also seem largely useless. It is a bit of a bummer since I feel the premise is a fun and interesting one and they mostly get it, so it would be fun to see them go out a bit more on a limb when it comes to the weapons also. You do also unlock different modes, like daily challenges and an endless survival mode but it still feels a bit bare at times.
Graphically, the game is serviceable, but it won’t win any prizes for its cartoonish and simplistic effects. However, it nails the most important aspect of these fast-paced shooters in that it runs really well and mostly without FPS slowdowns, which can be a serious problem when your death is just seconds away at any given time. Since you do a lot of dying in the game, it’s also nice that the load times are kept at a minimum and you can get back into the game instantly after being ripped apart.
That said, I still am continuing to have a great time with the game and it gets so many things right. The controls are responsive and snappy, the gameplay loop is fun and fast, and the premise adds a certain flavor to the game. I supposed I am predisposed to like Tesla vs Lovecraft, having grown up with both Smash TV and H.P Lovecraft’s special flavor of horror, but I find myself going back again and again to see if I can beat back the eldritch hordes one more time. Once you get into the flow state of just letting your reflexes take over as you zip around the arena, it can be as relaxing as it is hectic.
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