Thank you Infinite Level for sending us a review code!

War Ender is an action-platfomer game made and published by Infinite Level. You play as Red, part of an organization created to eliminate the group of villains who took peace away from the city. Your motivation to go out and fight is found when you happen upon your friends lying dead at the side of the road. You figure out that these villains who removed the city from its peaceful state were the ones who killed your friends, so you end up tracking them down. Every time you launch the game, it shows you the story, but you have the option to skip it.

In War Ender, you play through many different levels and worlds (three levels per world) and defeat many different kinds of enemies. These enemies include green turrets (shoot in a straight line, limited range), red turrets (bullets follow you, limited range), gunner humans (shoot in a straight line, limited range), robots (carry no arms but hurt you on contact while running around), mines (hurt you when stepped on), and much more.

Throughout each level, along with various enemies to fight off, there are checkpoints to respawn at when you die. When you get to a checkpoint flag, your health is fully restored. Often nearby these checkpoints are health-up packs, which may not fully restore your health as a checkpoint would, but they significantly refill it. There will normally be around three or four checkpoints in each level, and the fourth will likely be the flag that signifies the end of the level.

Though a tutorial is provided, the controls are still worth going over. When playing with a keyboard and mouse, you use A and D to run left and right, and the arrow keys are to shoot in different directions including under you if you are in midair, which can help you maneuver the level and get to otherwise unreachable places. Use the space bar to jump, S to fall through thin surfaces to get to lower areas, and press the L shift and R shift to dodge left or right. If you are playing War Ender with a gamepad, use the left stick to move and A to jump. You can use either the right stick or X, Y, and B to shoot in different directions. Press the left trigger to dodge left and the right trigger to dodge right.

The graphics in the game are nothing special, for they are rather colorful but very simplistic. They are not detailed, nor realistic. Not many things in the game, if any, have a round shape to them, or slightly rounded corners even. Most things you see in the game are rectangular; the graphics are not very detailed.

At almost all times while playing War Ender, you will be hearing music of some sort. It is normally an imitation of heavy metal, minus the words. The audio is fitting, though; it compliments the style of the game and the fighting and all that. It might not be the best of quality, however it does seem to go well with the game, and I appreciate the accompaniment as I fight the bad guys.

Fighting bad guys with a gun in your hand is considered to be cartoon violence, however, some parts of this game go beyond the cartoon boundary. Especially considering that at the very introduction of the story, it is mentioned that you find your friends dead on the street.

War Ender is a really fun game, even if I got frustrated at some of the levels. However, I did find a few bugs, or at least I do not think they were intentional. There are many platforms that assist your maneuvering through the levels, and some of them make you bounce upward when you jump onto them. I found that if you bounce on one of these platforms and press the space bar, you will shoot downward.

Even if you don’t use these platforms, I found some issues with shooting downward. In order to shoot in this direction, you must first jump up, and then press the down arrow key. However, if you hold the space bar and try to fire down at the enemies below you, you won’t be able to fire. It will not allow you to shoot.

While I was fighting a boss in the second world, when it was almost defeated, I approached the boss and the screen centered around the right of the boss, making it harder to fight it, because only its right half was showing. Later in the battle, it re-centered to where I could see the whole thing and easily destroy it. This happened every time I respawned to try to complete the third phase of the battle. I do not think that it was intentional.

Albeit there were some times in which I was frustrated at the game, and even though I did find a few bugs, I found War Ender to be a really fun title. I enjoyed playing it and would recommend it to anyone who likes this style of game and story.