Death Skid Marks Review

How does the phrase “Rogue-like RPG Car Combat Game” strike you? These are the choice words used to describe Death Skid Marks by its developer Studio Whiskey Tango, and if you can wrap your head around that combination, you’ll find it to be pretty much 100% accurate.

The setup is as simple as it is stupid: your task is to drive a group of strangers down the 666km of “route 666” in order to get to an undisclosed rock gig. The road is besieged by all sorts of neo-nazis, groupies, police, hitmen and strange robots, and it’s up to your combination of weaponised idiots to destroy everything they see, collecting cash rewards as they go. Heavy metal pounds in the background, character designs range from an abusive alien through to a human with a horse’s head, while stylish 2D vehicles sliding around a top-down perspective reminiscent of an APB-clone remixed with an 80s-style video nasty.

Choose wisely

The basic gameplay is easy enough to wrap your head around. A series of randomised, vertically-scrolling stages filled with enemy vehicles stretched between you and the end of route 666, with boss levels interspersed at various points to keep you on your toes. Control is simple; WASD moves your vehicle around the screen, the mouse is used to aim your targeting reticule, left-click is your trigger and number keys 1-4 activate whichever items your crew are carrying at the time. Passengers with melee weapons automatically swing at enemies or vehicles, while gunplay is as simple as pointing and clicking. Cars can be rammed into side rails or targeted with specific damage to blow them up, or drivers can be whittled down until their vehicle careens off the road.

Clear the lot and you’ll move on to the next wave in a group of two or three. At the end of each set you’re then presented with a choice of two routes, one of which will usually bump you further down the road and take you to a garage to resupply, while the other will cover a shorter distance but allow you to continue the fight. On the surface that sounds an easy decision, but as with most rogue-likes, staying in the fray can sometimes be more beneficial than not. To upgrade your vehicle and roster you’ll need money, and the only way to get that is by decapitating, burning and exploding anything that moves.

Trashy doesn’t cover it

Eventually the need for recuperation will become paramount however, so the exit lights beckon. Items, replacement passengers and weapons are randomised at each stop location, so you need to make the most of those supplies and try to form a cohesive plan. Crew members can be buffed in melee or ranged damage output and defence, while vehicles are also home to four different upgrade categories covering steering, engine, armour and brakes. If you prioritise melee damage then you might want to build towards an armoured vehicle perhaps, while ranged weaponry might be better placed in something fast and nimble. Ultimately, you’ll likely need it all.

Money is constantly in short supply, making each upgrade decision fairly crucial. As a result, for a game that can practically be played with one hand, Death Skid Marks’ rogue-like RPG and action credentials are actually surprisingly involving. The suite of loadout and character management choices are also bolstered by several randomised gameplay mechanics that crop up between stages, each of which offers a chance of boosted stats in return for either removing characters from your vehicle for a set number of stages, or in the case of russian roulette, the possibility of their untimely death.

Spot the joke

It is, unsurprisingly, a touch brutal. A full run-through from beginning to end of Death Skid Marks will take a couple of hours, but you’ll die a huge number of times before you even make it close to that point. Restarting is never a chore though. Each run is a chance to start fresh, to experiment with items and weapon loadouts that may work or may not, while overall progress towards unlocking vehicles, game modes and other boosts is gated by a total kill count that ticks upwards through all your attempts. You are getting somewhere all the time, it’s just inch-by-inch over bloody asphalt.

Ultimately however, although there is a huge amount of experimentation on offer here, Death Skid Marks’ basic vehicle combat does end up a touch repetitive. There’s a slight lack of feedback when cars clash or weaponry is unloaded into the opposition, and while I can appreciate the pick-up-and-play nature of the systems they built, I can’t help but feel that a little bit of a tighter focus on vehicle physics wouldn’t have gone amiss. Everything feels a little too floaty, and while that’s likely by design, perhaps a more nuanced and weighty sensation of handling and gunplay might have sustained it for even longer.