Developed by kantal collective and published by Take IT Studio! comes Otherwar. A mash-up of the tower defence and a the bullet hell genres. Originally released on PC back in 2023, Otherwar has now been released on consoles. But has the two year wait been worth it?
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“OTHERWAR is an surprising mash-up of Tower Defense & Bullet Hell games. Build and manage fortifications to defend the Gate of Heaven against the Hordes of Hell, while soaring over the battlefields as the defender Angel, and meet the monsters in direct combat!”

You know something, I love a good tower defence game. Throwing in some bullet hell gameplay makes for an interesting twist. The basics are that you control and angel and have to stop hordes of hell spawn from destroying the gates of Heaven. It’s all bog-standard tower defence stuff. You place towers and enemies follow set routes through those towers. Kill enemies, earn coin and upgrade your towers. In terms of the basics, Otherwar isn’t going to revolutionise the gaming world, not that it needs to.

The bullet hell mechanics come into play with you controlling the angel. While your towers do their thing, you can move around the screen and shot the enemies yourself. There is a lot of bullet dodging as enemies spew their projectiles in your general direction. Both the tower defence and the bullet hell elements work well together and generally speaking, Otherwar is a perfectly fine title. However, there is one major issue that lets the whole experience down. Balance.

There are three difficulty levels to play. Easy, medium and hard, with nine levels to complete. Easy is way, way, way too hard. It took me four attempts to finish the first level on easy. Hard is impossible. That is until you unlock some upgrades for your angel. Go from a single shot to double and even a triple, shot. Increase the speed and damage of your projectiles and more. There is a pretty good skill tree, but once you do unlock some of those upgrades, your angel becomes unstoppable. The game goes from stupidly hard on easy, to stupidly easy on hard.

The balance is off, a lot and once your angel is upgraded, you can take out enemies within seconds of them appearing on the screen, even on hard. After a while, you don’t even need the towers, in this tower defence game. It is a hell of a grind to get those upgrades, but the game breaks itself once you do. Otherwar comes with the tiny price point of £5 and honestly, for a fiver it’s worth spending a few hours with. But just be prepared for a really frustrating start due to high difficulty (on easy) and an easy ride to the end once you’ve upgraded. Otherwar is available now on PC and all the consoles.