Door Kickers preview: where kicking doors is pretty fun

Do you like tactical shooters like Rainbow Six? You know, those games where you can't just run and gun; where only a few bullets kill you and vice versa; where brains are more important than brawn and teamwork is the key to success. Well, that is exactly what Door Kickers is, except, instead of directly controlling someone in the middle of the action, you take the role of Swat Commander, watching everything from a top-down view as if you were looking at a map, directing your team in every manner--such as telling them where to go, how to breach a door, and where they should look once they're inside.

Door Kickers--a Steam Early Access title currently in Alpha 4--takes a lot of familiar ideas and mechanics, dumps them into a blender and presses liquefy, creating a game that feels both fresh and familiar, mixing every aspect in a way that makes sense. At its core, Door Kickers is a real-time strategy game; however, you can, at any time, pause the action to adjust orders, add new orders, or simply to stop and rethink your overall strategy. The ability to pause the action is a huge part of why the game works because it allows adjustments in the middle of a level, instead of forcing a complete restart if the current strategy isn't working.

The way everything is controlled is pretty simple: to move one of the team members, you just left-click on them, hold, and drag their path in the same way planes are guided in Flight Control--which makes me hope Door Kickers ends up on touch devices in the future; to perform an action, simply right-click on one of the team members and pick an option from the menu that pops up--there aren't many currently--or do the same with an object if it can be interacted with. And while everything is happening, you can pause and unpause the game as many times as you want without being penalized.

The game may sound easy, but the challenge comes in everything you don't know and have no control over; you start every level knowing only the layout and not where enemies are positioned or where some or all of the hostages are--if you're playing a level with hostages. This unknown factor is exacerbated because enemy positions are not exactly the same upon restarting a level; I love that they're never exactly the same because that means success comes from being a good commander and not just someone who has a great memory. In addition to the uknown factor, character positioning is extremely important because if a team member isn't looking at an enemy, they won't react to the enemy, even if they're standing right next to one. These little details help make Door Kickers always challenging, but never cheap.

In its current state, Door Kickers is pretty shallow--you only have one weapon, flashbang grenades, and no ability to customize your loadout, limiting the way you go about tackling a level--but there is a lot of potential and, despite its shallowness, it is still fun and strategic, with 35 levels of 4 different types to try and 3-star; and, there are plans to add customizable loadouts, persistent squads, a mission/campaign generator, and more relatively soon, so, unless something goes horribly wrong, the shallowness should be less of a problem sooner than later. Door Kickers is currently $9.99 on Steam with a planned full price of $19.99 when officially released, so, if you like what you see, you can pick it up for 50% off and get a decent chunk of content now with much more planned for later, supporting an independent developer in the process.

*Door Kickers is available now on Steam (PC/Mac/Linux) for $9.99.

Door Kickers (Steam)