Bloodgrounds: Review
Manage your own ludus, and bring your gladiators to combat across the fantasy realm of Bloodgrounds. A turn-base combat RPG developed by Exordium Games, and published by Daedalic Entertainment. It runs well on Linux and Steam Deck.
A game of gladiators
In Bloodgrounds you are a former gladiator that recently acquired your freedom and head to your ancestral home to manage your family’s ludus, a gladiatorial training school (think about hypocrisy). And honestly, I don’t remember much else of the story. There are some banters between the people that work for you, and maybe the area used to belong to your father? I will go back to that, but let’s talk about the strengths of the game fist.
First and foremost: the turn-based combat. It was what got me hooked when I recommended it during the Steam Next Fest, and it is even better in the full game.
In the square grid arena you will fight different creatures: human-like gladiators, lizard people, demon-worshipping cult raising the dead and many others each with their own move-set and behaviour. And don’t let appearances fool you, or as we say in Brazil “tamanho não é documento” (loosely, size is not (a) document (that proves your worth), or size does not matter). You might be fighting gigantic horrors during the game, but one of the most lethal enemies I fought against were this little white owls that jumps around and push your squad back while doing damage. It is fragile compared to other enemies, but it always sits high on the movement queue order and the pushback not only disrupts your tactics but also pushes your team into traps and explosives.
Your gladiators have a move-set base on their classes, but they start with two random skills from that set, and you can unlock others as they level up. Their class also defines which weapons they can equip, each with its own attack type, range and effect. They can equip all kinds of armour, buy you might want to wear kinds that synergizes with the stats and traits (also random) of your gladiator. Using sets of the same armour type will unlock extra stats. Heavy armour gives damage mitigation, light armour increases dodge chance, and medium armour helps with damage output.
The arena itself is a worthy foe. It might contain many dangers like traps, explosives and other obstacles. It can also have buffs, and taking control of the area surrounding it will make a lot of difference. There are some modifiers that add more danger to the arena every few turns. And later you unlock some arenas with living traps that move around the map.
The main arena events are never an on-off fight. You pick them from the world map, and they work as expeditions that last multiple days. Each day you fight a different set of enemies. Once you commit your gladiators to it, there is no turning back (if you are playing on hard). Your resources do not replenish between fights, and you cannot access your city stash of items during it, only the ones you bought to the trip will be available. Some long excursions would have an option to heal or cure debuffs every two fights, and some fights will reward you with consumables. There are also more permanent injuries, traumas that hinder your gladiators massively, like the loss of an attack point or reduced movement, and can only be treated back in your base.
One aspect that I liked during the demo, but not here, was the random list of required things to make the audience happy. After you start every excursion, you will have a list of things that the audience likes and dislikes. Making them like you will increase your gold reward and better loot rewards, but if you bore them, your payment will be cut short and other negative things will happen, like more traumas. It sounds great on the paper, but sometimes it is stacked (in your favour or not). Imagine playing a game that you cannot use your basic attack, but you only learn about it long after you picked 3 gladiators that rely heavily on basic attack. I think it even worse when you play on hard, the limited actions will increase exponentially the game difficulty. During a match, the audience throws buffing items in the arena for you to collect when they are excited, providing many benefits like longer movement, more armour, or extra attack. On the hard mode they throw even more items, it sounds like a good thing. But one of the requests to keep them happy is associated with the number of buffing items left on the ground when the battle ends, some crowds like gladiators that use them, some do not. Ending the match with 10 of those in the battlegrounds would be a massive hit to your popularity, either positive or negative depending on the requirement of the day.
The difficulties you choose at the start are quite balanced, the hard mode will have your gladiators dying often, or stacking too much trauma that they will be useless. But you get more gold and experience to compensate a bit for it. I liked the challenge, as it forces you to understand the mechanics more and the synergies of each ability. But because you don’t have a proper way to counter some things earlier, your gladiators will die a lot or accumulate too much trauma.
A gladiator’s death is definitive, on easier difficulties you might be able to retrieve their equipment. For that reason, the progress will feel a lot slower compared to the easier options. On the other hand, with easier difficulties, you can ignore many of the mechanics of the game, making combat a bit boring.
After the excursion you go back to the base. There you can use your gold to train and heal your gladiators, buy items, and improve your town. There is also a system of “age leap”, that will unlock a new tier of items and different structures every time you defeat the boss-excursion of an arena. This progress adds a lot to the game, and I am glad that it is paced because it feels overwhelming at first, and it feels useless later.
At some point you will have 3 places to acquire items in town, the market, the blacksmith, and the gambling den. The last two are mostly a waste of gold. Gambling den depends on lucky and massive amount of gold. The blacksmith can create weapons that can cause debuffs to the enemy that you cannot find elsewhere for extra cost, but it sacrifices stats and will rarely create something of similar quality or better than what you can find in the market.
These overwhelming things will affect every aspect of your city management. Including your gladiators, they will be added religion that might not match their roles, then their traits, that you got because they are good for arenas, but now are horrible for quests you can send them in from the tavern. And there is nothing you can do for minimaxing, there are so many stats to keep track and not enough gold to go around.
I do appreciate the intent to try to make the city busy, but there is no effort either by mechanics or by story that makes me want to engage with its life beside getting my gladiators ready for the next excursion. It did not make me develop a bond with the faun that greets me every time I advance the story because he is not really part of the gameplay, it feels just like a screen I see. On the other hand, I was more engaged with the gladiators that come with me, despite having no background, they are there the whole time suffering with me. I care more for Selene, the Retiarius from Ithaca (backstory I gave her), than whatever are those randoms taking care of the base.
The art in the game is good, but it varies a lot. You have something in the arena akin to a pixelated 3D, and it feels unique, I do like the unique design of the enemies and how the equipment your gladiators are wearing affects their aesthetics. The city uses minimalistic pixel art for the citizens moving around and more complex stuff for buildings and gods, and the chats a more akin to traditional 2D art.
The game is quite gory, lots of blood and bits flying around when you defeat an enemy. There is an option to remove it hidden under “Streamer mode”, I wish they were a bit more straightforward with the info around the game and what those things do.
The music could be better, it is ok in the menu, but everywhere else it sounds muffled with some weird noise to it, it is even worse in the base and I had to mute it.
Steam Deck Performance
The game is Playable on the Steam Deck, the warnings are about text size, difficulties to enter text (naming your ludos or the gladiators), and having to use the screen to access some menus.
The game has controller support but I do not recommend as it requires too many steps to do anything. To move you have to select the arena, but to use a skill you need to deselect the arena, select the right gladiator of the turn and then pick a skill to use. It was designed for mouse and keyboard, and the controller feels like an afterthought.
The battles were power hungry, hitting close to 18Wh. But the city was a bit less demanding, using around 10Wh.
I wish the time spent developing all those extra minigames in the city building were used to polish the rest of the game. But I quite enjoyed the game by focusing on the combat aspects and avoiding too many interactions in the city.
Bloodgrounds is available on Steam.
Note: We were provided a review key by the publisher.