Kurr Snaga Review

There are plenty of games where you fight orcs, and even a few where you play as orcs, but I can’t think of any off the top of my head which sees you playing as an orc in first person. And even if I could, I would bet that there’s not a lot of ragdoll physics shenanigans going on.

Kurr Snaga sees you in the shoes of an orc who escapes captivity and then goes on a rampage across six levels. Your only mission is to kill everyone there, using any one-handed weapon you can get your hands on, or environmental hazards. Once you’ve done those six, you get to go through them again two more times.

Which is where the game kinda falls flat, admittedly. Your first round is the “campaign”, which isn’t to say there’s a story, you just have to make your own up as you go. Once you’ve beaten the sixth level, you restart from the first with a timer. Enemies are spawned and run at you, and you have to kill a set number of them before the timer runs out. Six levels later, you’re starting again with an Endless mode, having to kill as many enemies as you can before you die.

Some of them just keep bleeding

Don’t get me wrong, what’s here is fun while it lasts, and the two extra modes are fun diversions, but in two hours I had experienced everything that it had to offer. If I had done a better job of the timed Port level, it would have been less time.

So, what do you get to do in Kurr Snaga’s six levels? You can kick, swing your weapon, block with the weapon, or throw the weapon. You can also jump, which means you have two attacks - one ordinary attack, and the jump attack. As I said, it’s a fun game as you run around punting people into market stalls before stabbing them (the kick does no damage), and it can be challenging to dodge around while trying to charge your own attack. There’s a certain amount of strategy, as there is exactly zero stealth aspect. Kick, throw, pick up another weapon and run works well, but definitely not in every case.

Sometimes just repeatedly kicking works

As I mentioned, there’s no stealth at all. You might be able to get the drop on them by throwing your weapon from afar, but as soon as you’re within a certain radius, or they see you, then they’re coming for you. The AI has a couple of different attacks, depending on the enemy type, but they’re fairly single-minded. They will follow you, and the levels aren’t big enough to lose them in. It’s a little simplistic, to be perfectly honest, though games don’t have to be complicated to be fun.

One of my favourite parts of Kurr Snaga is in the third level, Bowl between the Hills, which has some exploding barrels. If NoTime Studios brought out a level creator or sandbox, I’d love to fill a level with those. The environmental hazards are: barrels, boulders, logs and deep water. Two of the levels have a nice expanse of deep water, perfect for yeeting soldiers into, and the first one has a spike pit - kicking isn’t just a feature, it’s a legitimate strategy for winning.

And sometimes it's just cathartic

The music is quite repetitive, and I actually wound up muting the music in the options so that I could play my own. The graphics are kinda basic, but it really suits this game, it lets it be over the top. However, the way the orc sways as he runs, and the weird field of view will put people off.

I would definitely have rated this higher if there was some kind of leaderboard involved in the timed or Endless levels. Or even some way to find out your own scores. I mean, it’s fun letting a level fill up with soldiers, killing the framerate slowly but surely, but if nobody is ever going to know that you “killed” 177 enemies unless you show them a screenshot.

Which means you’ve got to remember to take a screenshot

Whilst Kurr Snaga is a fun couple of hours, NoTime Studios needs to give us a reason to keep playing. A leaderboard, or even a personal high score, would have been ideal.