Preview: DoorKickers Alpha Kicks Doors In

The indie game market has not yet heard of any significant Romanian developed titles thus far, but KillHouse game may change that quite a bit. Made by three ex-Ubisoft employees with a load of experience (people I've actually worked with), DoorKickers is a top-down strategy game where you control a SWAT team on various self-contained missions in a very tactical manner, where you plan what the members would do while the game is paused and letting the game play out while giving the members indications. 

The alpha of the game is playable instantly if you want to opt into buying it from their website for $7.99. Despite being in very early Alpha, it's very playable and very fun - you can see the potential oozing through every pore.

Now then, I'm not the best player (yet), but it's damn satisfying when you get the final kill in slow-mo and nobody on your team had died.

This is one of the earlier missions, but it gives you a general outline of how a mission would go on. Keep in mind that these missions have par times of under one minute, and even if you're exceedingly cautious, you won't clock in over 5 minutes on any single missions unless you AFK.

Meet Team Turtles. The guy to the north is Turtle 1, aka Leonardo (he's the nr. 1 turtle). The guy next to him is Donatello, he's Turtle 2 and the lesser one of the two. The other two guys are back home in some sort of terrarium, sharing a pizza with a rat. Both are armed with Colt 1911 pistols. The budget is low, don't judge them.

They've spent a few seconds sneaking around the killhouse to reach the door of room 8 there (you start on the lower left). There, Turtle 1 decides to barge in with a flashbang. The guy barely had time to notice the flashbang flying next to his head before being shot by a well aimed bullet from the Turtles.

Entry is made, but the commotion causes the tangos in room 7 and 9 to barge in uninvited. Just as uninvited were the bullets to the various vital parts.

While Don keeps watch on room 7 and the hallway, Leo senses an extra enemy in room 9. He throws a flashbang. It doesn't have any effect, but the guy in the corner gets gunned down anyway.

The commotion attracts attention from the hallway, but the dude changes his mind just as he enters Don's line of sight. He doesn't even notice the two bullets embedded in the door frame the moment he turned around (the AI isn't quite there yet).

Don decides to reload and throw a flashbang to confuse any dudes that might be roaming around the hallway. He follows through and shoots the confused tango in the back of the head, mafioso style.

After throwing a flashbang just to make sure the coast is clear, Leo moves into the hallway and covers the entire length of it while Don fumbles around. Mistake number one - a guy could have scared Leo from room 3 and killed him without any time to respond. Back to boot camp, Leo!

After noticing his bad positioning, he removes his ass from the dangerous position and gets himself in a more secure position. Good rectification. You're still going to bootcamp. Meanwhile, Don moves up to finish the sweep and clear.

Leo decides to breach room 3 by himself. Dammit Leo, I'm adding 20 laps to that bootcamp time. Not only that, but you're leaving the hall uncovered. At least there's nobody in the room.

Don looks on and covers the hallway while Leo moves on to inspect room 2 and then put a camera under room 5's door. Tango in sight. He looks ready for action.

And indeed he was, but not ready enough to not get confused in the flashbang assault and getting shot in the face by Leo. In the meanwhile, Don gets tired of waiting and is moving towards the final two rooms.

Don does it by the book, he peeks inside room 4 and sees a tango in the corner. He prepares a flashbang as Leo moves towards room 1.

Turtle 2 drops the tango in room 4. Leo is about to turn the corner and drop the last one.

And there you have it. Don regains top Turtle rank while Leo is off to bootcamp again doing 20 laps. It is nice to see 2 bullets per flashbang used.

Anyways this is an early mission, but it's what you can expect later in the game. There's only a couple of weapons available thus far and 22 challenge missions. In addition, this level looks like a killhouse, but later levels are set in hotels, houses and everything inbetween, with cover and hiding places and toilets to hide inside of.

What we've seen thus far is, again, full of potential and I can't wait to see what they're going to come up with next. Support KillHouse and you'll get to experience it first-hand.