Kwari Review

4.1

Format PC

Developer Kwari

Publisher Kwari

Genre First Person Shooter

15 Comments

Games traditionally work like this: you buy it, you install it, and then you play it as much as you like until you grow old, wither, and die. Let me try and sell a different idea to you.

How about instead you install the game, and then pay and pay and pay every time you play it? Sounds good, eh? Oh, and you could win some money too! You know, after you've paid for your ammunition.

Of course the implication is supposed to be that you'll make money playing. The reality, however, doesn't live up to this for a number of reasons.

First and foremost, Kwari is free to download, but you have to pay for ammunition. And then again when you pick up weapons, drops and health. And again when you get shot.

If you're going to ask someone to continuously pay money to be able to play your game, you're going to have to provide one hell of a decent shooter. And not, let's say, something that looks and feels like a weak Quake II clone. Yeah, you read that right. Quake II.

It's that horrible childhood feeling of the costume shop being out of Spider-Man outfits right before the big party, and your mum saying, "Don't worry dear, I'll sew one for you." The whole thing reeks of "This is what those first-person shooters are like, right?" It's a decade out of date, with horrible graphics, and remarkably tiresome to play.

This only gets worse as you watch your cash balance rapidly descend every time you pick up a new weapon, or walk over a health drop. It's a real fight against your gaming instincts to avoid the many pickups in the levels, and a pain when you accidentally run over 17 of them in a row during combat. Like I did. All the time.


So the redeeming feature would be what's at stake, right? The chance to make a fortune.

You can make cash in Kwari by killing your opponents or by ending the round in possession of a pill: like a flag, but edible.

Be excellent, and you could apparently make a packet. There are whopping prizes on offer in the realms of tens of thousands of dollars. The trouble is, I can't see where anyone is winning them.

In fact, if the game's site's statistics are accurate, barely anyone has made money, the 11th highest being $5 down. This could possibly have something to do with the unbalanced nature of the money movement.

If you're playing with ten other players, and they're all firing at you, you're going to be losing a lot more cash than you can gain by shooting one of them at a time. In three matches, I'd blown £10. It doesn't feel fun.

It would make much more sense to adopt the approach of a sit-and-go poker game. You pay to enter a match, the top three players coming out with a win, the rest having committed how much they were prepared to lose at the start.

The way it is now, get in a server with some decent players, and you could see your funds dribble away.

There's a free version, but without the incentive of profit there's no reason to put up with such a dated, remarkably clunky shooter. With only one game mode at launch, and so few playing, right now there isn't much point in putting up with the commercial version, either.

John Walker