Otherwar is a blend of Tower Defense and Bullet Hell wrapped in charming pixel art, which casts you as a defender angel tasked with protecting the Gate of Heaven from the Hordes of Hell. On paper, it’s a fresh take: strategic tower placement meets arcade-style dodging and shooting. Unfortunately, while the concept sounds exciting, the execution struggles to keep the momentum going.
At first, the game feels intriguing. Each of the nine handcrafted missions plays like a tactical puzzle, where you’ll need to carefully place towers, manage resources, and dodge bullet patterns that vary with enemy types. The addition of PS5 DualSense support is a nice touch, letting you feel every vibration and trigger resistance as waves close in. Clearing levels unlocks new towers, and XP can be spent on skills like faster movement or increased damage, giving you variation to enhance your gameplay experience. But the more exciting skills need a lot more XP for you to unlock that just proves to be too long a struggle to get to.
But after the frustratingly slow beginning to get to a good cadence after clearing the first couple of levels without any additional skills or towers, the shine wears off. Progression continues to feel painfully slow, with a skill tree that’s basic and underwhelming. Power-ups never feel game-changing, leaving little to look forward to beyond the next tower unlock. Stages drag on for 15-20 minutes each, with waves that often feel more like a slog than a thrill. While placing towers strategically and experimenting with different builds offers some fun, the action quickly slips into repetition. The angel’s active role, dodging bullets and firing back, without much variety of its weapon, rarely feels exciting enough to balance out the grind.
Compared to faster-paced indie hits like Vampire Survivors, which manage to be addictive through constant rewards and escalating tension, Otherwar feels anticlimactic. The mix of genres is interesting, but it doesn’t evolve in meaningful ways, and the slow pace makes it hard to stay engaged. If anything, the highlight is tinkering with tower placement and upgrades while your character spends most of the time dodging bullets, some of which move with uncanny, awkward patterns and might get visually difficult to distinguish from the enemies from time to time.
There’s a solid foundation here, and fans of slow, strategic gameplay may find something to enjoy. But overall, Otherwar lacks the spark to make its mash-up feel more than the sum of its parts. For a game about the battle between Heaven and Hell, the experience feels strangely muted.
Verdict: Otherwar has potential in its genre-blending ideas, but its slow pace, repetitive stages, and uninspired progression make it more of a curiosity than a must-play.
