Door Kickers - Early Access Hands-On

{Door Kickers} - or more specifically the alpha 9 version that we've been playing recently - is looking like it's going to be a tactical treat. The game is played from a top-down perspective, with little swat soldiers scurrying around maps styled like architectural plans. It's out now on Steam Early Access, and likely to land in a finalised state later this year.

We started off by jumping straight into the action, instructions be damned. The first few levels are simple enough that this wasn't an issue. Your swat units sit, poised, waiting to storm into a building. You move them by selecting each officer and dragging a line to his intended destination. This can be done while paused, or in realtime as the action unfolds. There's reasons for doing both, but ultimately {Door Kickers} has been designed with a careful tactical approach in mind, and pausing the action and queuing commands is the optimum way to play, especially after the easier opening rounds are a distant memory.

You have two swat team members at first, but this number quickly increases. You can plot out each of your team's path through the level and then hit play, and watch the action unfold in front of you, hoping for the best. Alternatively you can hit pause time and again, carefully shuffling your team around the various maps, issuing orders as and when required.

Doors, as the title implies, play a significant part of the action. They can be kicked open, locks can be picked, they can be blown off the hinges, and you can use a crowbar when required. Using a camera allows you line of sight behind the door, giving you tactical insight as to what challenges lay ahead. There's other options, such as flash bangs, but how you enter a room often defines your fortunes once inside.

There's different mission types. Your starting brief is to simply kill all terrorists on sight, but quickly variants are thrown into the mix, most notably there are hostage situations and bombs to diffuse. As buildings become more complicated and the number of targets increases, the difficulty ramps up. You're given control of more units, and can storm in from multiple entrances.

Your troops carry out actions automatically, and will shoot on sight, so aiming is taken out of your hands and replaced by tactical planning. It's a neat system, and although you don't need to stare down the barrel of a gun and pull trigger as you do in similarly themed titles, you still need to make sure your units are facing the right direction to see dangers coming, otherwise they're going to get a bullet in the back.

The play and pause mechanic works well, but you can also plot out actions on the fly, pointing your team as the action unfolds, dragging the cursor across the level, defining their route through the environment. Speaking of environments, we've not played all of the available content, but there's a decent amount of variation in the different maps, even if the floor plan layout gives them all a familiar feel.

If you get bored of what's there already, you can always make your own maps with the level editor. We didn't spend long here, but it looks quite straightforward, and making your own - albeit simple - level isn't difficult. Making it interesting will, however, take a bit more time. You can also generate new levels/missions, setting preferences and adjusting the challenge as required.

There's currently no campaign at the moment, just a succession of missions of increasing difficulty, and a layer of strategy over the top of all the tactical exchanges would be nice. We're also promised progression for the different units. How this will manifest itself remains to be seen, but we're eager to find out more. There's potential for an interesting story, or stories, to wrap around the action, and a strong narrative would only reinforce a connection with the individual units. Let's hope KillHouse Games can realise the potential here.

We like the systems that are in place, but perhaps the auto-fail for a hostage getting killed feels a little on the harsh side. The thought of cutscenes with swat team members drowning their sorrows because of botched missions and high body counts certainly amuses, but possibly it wouldn't fit tonally. I suppose what we're getting at is this; there's a mechanically sound game here, with plenty of potential, and a decent campaign/narrative plus a layer of strategy between missions could be the glue needed to hold it all together and make this a must-buy title.

As it stands it's an interesting proposition. What's already there is decent, solid fun. There's a challenge that quickly ramps, but we didn't mind retrying the same levels several times in order to get through a tricky area. It gets punishing quickly, but it didn't feel unfair. Once we get our hands on the finished build we'll find out just how good it is, but if you enjoyed {Frozen Synapse} (or games of that ilk), there's enough in place already to justify an Early Access purchase.