Forced

In FORCED, the player takes the role of a slave who becomes a gladiator in order to gain freedom. But before this is an option, the player has to survive a series of deadly arena challenges.

This is a (slightly angled) top-down action game in which the player directly moves the character while fighting a lot of monsters. The viewing direction, and therefore the attack direction, is controlled separately from movement. The main speciality is Balfus: this sphere does not only serve as mentor and likes to comment, but is also an important tactical element. By pressing a button, Balfus moves in a straight line towards the player character and if he passes directly over a shrine, Balfus changes his abilities. For example, moving over a healing shrine gives him an healing aura or another shrine makes him into a bomb. Each arena has different winning condition, e.g. beating a boss or solving switch puzzles.

When starting the game, the player can choose between classes which have different attacks and abilities. After solving an arena, the player receives one crystal which are invested into active and passive skills. Additional crystals are earned by solving a special challenge (e.g. no healing) and beating a time limit. The game allows one resurrection after death per challenge, but then the extra crystals are automatically out of reach.

The campaign can be played in co-op with up to four players. The catch is that there is still only one Balfus which is controlled by all players.

The later released console versions, informally called Forced: Slightly Better Edition, have redesigned networking for multiplayer games, optimization, bug fixes and new survival maps.