As soon as I locked eyes on Bella Wants Blood, I was intrigued. The striking white-over-red-over-black visuals used in this roguelite tower defense game immediately set it apart from the crowd.
Yet it wasn’t just the quirky graphics that caught my attention; I’m also increasingly interested in the roguelite tower defense sub-genre. I’ve come to realise the TD gameplay loop suits the roguelite format very nicely indeed, and we’re seeing them combined with ever increasing frequency.
Thrown together here, tower defense aspects and a twisted theme have congealed into a sinister little game, wherein you must funnel the blood of your enemies down a series of gutters and into the waiting mouth of the eponymous Bella. It’s grim stuff, if you think about it for too long, so I suggest you don’t.
Luckily for us, the representation of this ghoulish bloodbath is actually quite abstract, and Bella Wants Blood plays out on a grid of blocks. Big square gutters are your means of creating distance between the spawning monstrosities that must be mulched, and the waiting mouth of Bella.
Either side of this ever-elongating gutter, you can place turrets with disturbing abilities and varying ranges, combining their powers to squash your enemies as they approach, and the blood trickles down the gutters to Bella’s delight. However, if the mob gets past your defenses and between Bella’s teeth her impatience rises. Once she is sufficiently pissed off, you’re done for.
Bella’s bite-sized bloodbath
There are several different bosses to beat on your way to the big bad, and a whole bunch of smaller monstrous mobs to overcome during each mini-campaign. Every puzzle-battle is one location in a network of potential encounters, like you’ve seen in FTL or Slay the Spire. The threaded pathways on the map mean that you can pick your challenges but also your rewards, allowing you a degree of autonomy in terms of how you evolve your defenses, grow your gutter, or even add game-changing mementos to your collection.
Whether you’re placing gutters or defensive units, each action has its own pros and cons, and it’s up to you to position everything as efficiently as possible. Do you want a short but deadly gauntlett for your enemies to run, or do you want to build an elaborate gutter and try for more nuanced tower placements. Both are valid tactics, if you balance things right.
The stylised visuals fit with the game’s puzzle-centric approach. The use of abstract symbols ensure that everything is simple to parse and not totally disgusting. One good feature is the ability to re-organise any previously played units in order to better optimise their configuration. For example, certain defenses work best against enemy monstrosities with low health, so as you add more turrets to the board, you can move your units around to ensure that they’re doing the most damage possible.
As mentioned, there are different bosses to deal with, and you can turn up the difficulty if you’re that way inclined, or even try and climb the leaderboards. When beginning each run you get to choose your starting hand; a handful of pre-selected units designed to help you get going. It’s a decision that will guide your thinking during the first part of that run, as you pick your path on the map and start smashing up monstrosities.
This is a streamlined game where the runs are short and the rounds are shorter still. If you want to see everything that Bella has to offer, there are ways to stretch it out, but if you just want something short and sweet to play between longer commitments, this is also quite pick-up-and-play friendly. Being succinct is fine in my book and I had a good time for the few hours that it had my attention. Bella Wants Blood is a tasty little morsel indeed.
Bella Wants Blood is out now on Steam PC (Linux, Mac, Windows) and I played the game via access provided by the developer, Sonderland!
