Listen up indie developers, if you are going to release a multiplayer only game on Steam it would be in your best interest to either have a single player story mode of some kind, or at the very least at in some bot support. Tiki Galore gets all of these things wrong as it’s a multiplayer only game with zero player base, even after a few days on the market, had no bots, and has four levels. My Steam profile says I’ve put in almost three hours into the game and in that time I haven’t seen another player, not even one of the developers of the game who you’d think would at least be around at launch. Tiki Galore is terrible, the kind of terrible that will cost you $14.99 for the pleasure of standing around by yourself.
Tiki Galore bills itself as an arena based shooter, and I guess that’s right, I just haven’t been able to experience that. You play as a nondescript islander with a spear and try to kill other nondescript islanders who have their own spears. That pretty much sums up the entire experience, or it would, but as there are no players so I’m not even sure how combat works. You’ll also be able to collect these floating heads that are all over the place and each goes toward building up your special meter. These heads are all missing any sort of texture mapping, so they just look like placeholders that someone in studio forgot to finish. When you do collect enough heads –they all mumble every time you pick one up which gets annoying quick– you can select a special attack that lets you lay a trap, put up a shield, get a powered up shot and more. It’s a cool mechanic that randomizes each time in a slot machine system, but as there are no players I have no idea what they do. Also, all you get is a spear.
Spear, spear, spear, spear, spear…
Graphically things only get worse. Tiki Galore is built on the Unreal 4 engine, but if anything, all it does is give Unreal Engine 4 a bad name. It’s not much of a stretch to say that there are plenty of PS2 era games that looks leaps and bounds better that Tiki Galore. Everything just looks so lifeless and bland, with textures and patterns repeating themselves like it was someones first mod in the original Doom engine. There just isn’t much detail anywhere in the world to be had. There are also a lot of random artifacts, glitches, tearing and the like that it’s depressing. When your arena based game if full of players, this sort of thing may get overlooked, but when you are all alone the only thing to do is wander around looking into everything.
That’s it. I have nothing more to say which is a shame because there is a very cool premise to what’s being presented. It’s a very original take on a classic formula, but the multiplayer only way was a just a bad call, especially when you don’t have the marketing budget to get the word out, or have a server running with a few idiot bots. In the days since launch the community is a ghost town and the forums have a total of three posts all just making fun of the game. There is one positive review on the store page, but as I never saw another player, let alone the one posting while my game was sitting open. Odds are it’s a developer, or at the very least one of their friends.
Tiki Galore functions, so I can at least say “It’s a game” in the very loosest of terms. Stay away from this one and I’ll leave you with my screenshot adventure of Tiki Galore.
Update: So, I sat on this review for an extra day because it was 3am when I finished it –my schedule sucks– and I wanted to see if the extra day would produce a developer run server as the game had none for the first few days. Good news is that I did find a server run by the studio, but the bad news is that it was still mostly empty and the game ran worse when there were three of us playing. Gameplay was repetitive and extremely boring as constantly throwing a spear turns into a click fest that feels like I’m watching a LoL tournament, and the graphics are bland and visually a mess on the eyes when people are in motion, with aiming a near impossibility especially in the forced over the shoulder perspective the game employs. Lastly, Tiki Galore just isn’t all that fun and not worth the $15 asking price to play with one other person… sometimes… maybe. It’s a same as I still think the idea Tiki Galore throws out there is solid, and maybe if there was a decent community a little fun could be squeezed out, but as it stands the game is a mess and I don’t think the mistakes made at launch can be rectified.
If you want a fun arena based shooter I suggest you go play the completely free to play Quake Live instead.
My adventure into the barren wastes that is Tiki Galore begins.
The game is so close to looking okay, but someone just forgot to render the graphics properly.
I wandered in the jungle looking for ground that isn’t a PNG file of grass pasted on a flat surface.
The fabric of reality in this world is thin at best.
A visual representation of how I’m feeling many games in. Note the giant floating un-skinned head to the right.
Deep customization.
In my quest for companionship I kept trying to make friends with the pond shark in the temple.
No matter what I tried I couldn’t get the shark to be my friend.
I got tired of waiting that I decided to make camp in some plant.
Venturing deeper I found what the natives call the volcano of repeating textures.
Being barefoot inside a volcano always leads to spontaneous combustion of the extremities.
I sure do have a lot of spears.
In my boredom I managed to figure out how to shoot a spear into my spear.
Throwing spears into the world beyond the world.
Gave this painting some braces.
Spears will literally fly forever.
After days of searching another writer and I managed to find a server with another player by the name of Chadwick. The game did not improve…
About Author
