Fellowship Preview

Since Vampire Survivors came out in 2021, there has been a slew of games that have been recreating that same gameplay and putting their own twist on that winning formula. Fellowship is another one of those titles, having you playing as a team of characters trying to work together to take down the hordes of rats, goblins, and angry birds. Collecting gold and treasure will level you up, allowing you to select from three cards representing which power-up you would like to use. Each of the characters (there are four to select from at the start) has three unique abilities that will randomly appear as power-up options if the character is on your team. Their HP, Attack Power, and Attack Speeds are measured by Low, Medium, and High, so it's worth checking out when you are selecting who to start with. I love the look of the Priest (who happens to be an owl), but the Priest has a Low HP rating, so it doesn't take many hits for the poor birdie to die.

Fellowship has a ton of things to unlock and collect, including new characters, armour, weapons, and gems. There is a workshop available where you can merge two of the same items together to create something stronger than the individual item was. However, Fellowship isn’t totally clear on where exactly you collect all these different things. So the few I found were just found by wandering around the area as I was being chased non-stop by crazy large amounts of enemies.

When you first start, you get to select one of three character cards, themselves randomly selected from the original four characters. This is the fighter that you will start your run with. The one thing that is very noticeable, if you have played twin-stick shooters like this in the past, is how ridiculously slow you move. Right from the get-go, it was hard to stay away from the killer rats, and trying to collect the gems and gold that they dropped was very hard to do. So, when choosing a warrior, I tried to select one that has an attack with a bit of distance to keep a bit of space between us. I would try to make large loops to lure them away from the items so that I could swing back and grab what I could. Once you get enough to level up, you will select which upgrade and pray that it’s something useful for once! Some of the cards increase your speed (which is a must!), some increase the area that your weapon covers and others let you recruit new characters to add to your team. Once you get more characters on the team, you will see cards that will use their special abilities. 

When you become a team of two, the other character will help you fight, though you can only choose where your primary fighter is aiming. It’s not until you have three characters that you have the ability to choose what formation they move in, and each has its own benefits. The Circle Formation allows the leader (who is in the middle to heal as time passes) while the members on the outside get extra armour. The Arrow Shape gives you better attack speed, and the Straight Line gives everyone a speed bonus, and everyone shoots in the same direction. Having these extra characters is great, but the more that you have and are trying to control, the harder it gets. You become a huge blob that is running into everything, and due to the level design with obstacles like tree trunks, arches, and statues, you can get stuck against them. This lets the enemy easily surround you and attack. Once a character runs out of health, they disappear, but not forever. You can try to make your way to a monument where you can resurrect one of your fallen characters. Though levelling up normally will make the extra fighters available to recruit again.

Fellowship is an incredibly challenging game, even when you try to have fighters that can heal the team, use ranged attacks, and are just strong like The Warrior. I repeatedly keep getting my butt kicked. My longest run so far has been about six and a half minutes, whereas the shortest was 50 seconds. I would love to figure out how to use the items like the armour and how to unlock the other characters, but the game currently really gives you no direction in the game. I am hoping that a tutorial or some kind of information is provided on how to improve your team. I would love to explore the other areas that are in this world, but it looks like I am going to be stuck in this same location until I figure out how I can use all these gold coins that I have collected to upgrade my characters. Currently, if you are a fan of very challenging twin-stick shooters with lots of stuff to unlock, like a cool owl fighter and a fox archer, this may be a title for you. Honestly, I'm just excited to have a team of cool animal warriors working together to take down the enemy! But, if you are expecting an experience more similar to Vampire Survivors, you may get very frustrated, even with all the cool-looking characters!