Ever been in a position where two people are really going at each other, hurling pointed jabs and insults back and forth, and you’re stuck in the middle? Well then, perhaps you’ll empathise with the enemies in Archons, a twin-stick Vampire Survivors-like where you control two characters at once, and attacks bounce between them automatically as they move about the arena. I gave the Steam Next Fest demo a quick whirl today, and after a couple of swift attempts (I died horribly fast), I realised this could become a bit of a danger to my free time, so I’ve put it away for now.
Archons doesn’t try to hide its influences. The developer very clearly asked themselves one day: what if you took Vampire Survivors, and substituted the main character for two High Templar from StarCraft? Also, each character is independently controlled by one gamepad stick, like Brothers: A Tale Of Two Sons.
It sounds like a gimmick, and it is. But it also feels nicely put together. The attacks are punchy and precise, the chaos is pretty, and I could always tell what was happening on-screen despite the oodles of juicy bugs flinging themselves at me the whole time. Best of all though, every single attack is synced up to the music. Goddamn, I love it when things are synced up to the music.
It certainly requires a lot more active thought than the far simpler Vampire Survivors. My first attempts to split my attention between both my archons at once were laughably blunderous. It feels like a muscle I’d have to work out often before it becomes second nature. That also means Archons will likely never recapture the same popularity as the granddaddy of this fledgling sub-genre. It’s simply far easier to reach those dopamine highs in Vampire Survivors.
That’s fine with me though, because I’m pretty much done with Vampire Survivors, and I’m glad games are cropping up which offer their own spin. I imagine for a lot of people, the added finnickiness of Archons flies in the face of why people play these fairly mindless Survivor-likes. But it hits just right for me. I like that you have to be a lot more thoughtful and focused in Archons if you want to survive more than a minute or two.
If you want to give Archons a go, check out its demo on Steam. I just played it one more time, and survived for 10 minutes, finally dying to the boss of the first area. If you survive longer than that (or beat the boss), you’re officially better at video games than me.