Death Roads: Tournament Preview

Back in March, Death Roads: Tournament, a project from developer The Knights of Unity, was released onto Steam Early Access. Set in a Mad Max-styled post-apocalyptic American wasteland, the game follows a deadly race across the United States where only one driver will survive and be granted passage through the great gate to East Coast City (or, the ECCT), the last nice place to live — or so it seems… During this great tournament across the Death Roads, each combatant must survive through a roguelike onslaught of road-raging battles, represented as turn-based strategy fights on the road.

A handful of the deeper mechanics took me a little while to fully understand — and I suffered for that over my first few runs — but Death Roads: Tournament’s core gameplay is rather easy to understand. First, you choose one of the branching paths, starting vehicles, and drivers, all with their own benefits and downsides. Then, drive across the map and participate in a variety of increasingly difficult and randomised events and battles along the way. The combat itself makes up the meat of the experience, though there are plenty of opportunities to rebuild your chosen car to raise various stats and adjust which abilities you want at your disposal.

In each encounter, you find yourself on the road, surrounded by other vehicles, and it’s up to you to manage your own condition, which is essentially your car’s HP; handling, the number of points you’re able to spend on actions per turn; and your position relative to your enemies’. Each turn begins with you drawing up to six cards, which determine what actions you can take. The cards come with a handling cost and allow you to either move around, attack with mounted weaponry or apply a series of buffs and debuffs to you and those around you. At any point, you may end your turn, but if you run out of handling before then — or take enough damage to your handling before your next turn — your vehicle will skid, forcing you to take up to five random actions, which can also be combined with personal debuffs. While dealing with all of that, you’ve also got to do your best to either destroy or escape your foes. Though keep in mind, figuring out the best place to end your turn in — and when it’s safe to deliberately skid — is often just as important as maximising damage dealt to your opponents.

There’s a little more to the combat, but on the whole, these battles have a lot to sink your teeth into and seeking out the equipment with the highest numbers attached isn’t always the best strategy. Brute force certainly works — especially when you’re bashing your vehicle into another sorry soul for impressively high numbers of damage — but putting together a clear plan for how best to utilise that force is usually the best bet. The environment itself is a great tool for the player, offering fantastic opportunities to deal extra damage, quickly back up, or even take care of other vehicles instantly. Plus, with The Knights of Unity planning on bringing in a few more biomes for the final release, I imagine even more options will lie ahead.

Of course, while the strategy gameplay on presentation here is fantastic, it does seem a tad odd at first blush to use bombastic car racing as the stylistic overcoat, what with how fast and kinetic those are supposed to be and how slow and methodical the strategy genre can become. However, Death Roads: Tournament does a great job of preserving that sense of speed and destruction with its presentation and visual flair. While there’s certainly an obvious Mad Max styling all around, I also found that the battles looked rather similar to a comic book. The vehicles easily popped out against the background and offered the appearance of speed while still providing the visual clarity needed to make sense of the playing field during the turn-based strategy action. The overall visual style works quite well, offering loads of fun variety, with every car looking different, thanks to how each of them changes depending on what weapons they have equipped.

Those same stylings can also be heard in the sound design and soundtrack — every action has a clear and satisfying sound associated with it. Notably, the crash that comes from each defeated — and thusly exploded — vehicle hits all of the right notes. The music works well towards the car-focused action, keeping the blood pumping. There are two particular highlights there, one of which being the track that plays during every encounter with the other major challengers, which really has this epic quality to it, as though everything you’ve worked towards is riding on this one battle (or, well, these one-to-four battles) and anything could happen. The other musical highlight plays over the final fight of each successful run, where the player speeds along the tunnel to their dream city, survival in their grasp, only to be met with The Interceptor, a mysterious, sleek vehicle with a massive health bar, more power than anyone they’ve faced on the road prior, and a deeply foreboding track that can send chills down one’s spine.

I struggled a few times against both The Interceptor and the rest of the challenges along the road, stringing together unsuccessful run after run, throwing different vehicle designs against the wall until something might stick. However, it wasn’t until I started focusing on taking down my fellow challengers instead of outright avoiding them that I managed to get several minor wins along the route and finally unlocked a few more characters. Then, I found one who just clicked really well with my playstyle and, after lucking out with a truly fantastic kit, created a monster of a car that could consistently knock my enemies clear off the road with a single bash. I’d tried quite hard to hold onto a more defensive strategy, which can work pretty well in standard fights but which hurts more than it helps in prolonged combat, yet Death Roads: Tournament has, so far, done a bang-up job of forcing me to explore outside of my comfort zone.

The Knights of Unity plan on keeping Death Roads: Tournament in Early Access for about a year, and they have many new updates planned along the road, including more enemies, areas, characters, and other features that I can’t wait to explore. Whether that comes along the path to release or at the end of their journey, I am very excited about what will come on the horizon.