Greed: Black Border

Welcome to the distant future. The alliance of the five planets is broken. Fifty years of peace destroyed through mistrust and greed. Even the discovery of Ikarium couldn't bring mankind back together. Instead the unique metal started a new space-age whose only result was that the colonies are now on the brink of war. The route between the colonies and the asteroid swarm Likanos - the only known source of Ikarium - is littered with destroyed mining and pirate ships. In the middle: a former soldier from the planet Camulos. The most powerful colony and the main reason why the alliance broke. As many other soldiers and researches he didn't agree with the plans of his government and became a freelance mercenary, patrolling the Likanos asterioud swarm. One day he picks up a distress-signal and finds a lone mining ship drifting in space. His ship docks on and the adventure begins.

GREED: Black Border is a mix of Diablo and Shadowgrounds. At the start of the game the player chooses one of three available characters to uncover the mysteries of the mining ship with. The pyro likes it up close and hot and uses uses only a flamethrower. The marine relies on his gatling gun to keep the enemies at bay but can also take a beating thanks to his heavy armor. The third character is the plasma-engineer. She uses a sniper-rifle and takes out the enemies from the distance. The player can not change the appearance or values of his character. Instead the individualisation happens through the investment of skill points. Each level up grants one skill point and two attribute points allowing the player to increase the shield energy or the health of his character. The skill point on the other hand is used to unlock or upgrade new talents through a three-part skill tree. Divided into active (e.g. throwing a grenade), offensive (e.g. automatic knock-back every few seconds) and defensive (e.g. automatic healing) skills, the player can only use one talent of each section at the same time.

Like in every other Hack 'n Slay-RPG these talents help to fight the hordes and hordes of enemies the player will encounter on his journey and will be his only source of experience points. But the most damage is of course done by using weapons. Each character can only use his weapon-class and in singleplayer only those will drop differing in quality and attributes. The same goes for the armor which only consists of helmet (except for the plasma-engineer) and chest. To add a bit more variation, some of the higher quality items have one or more upgrade slots available. Modules dropped by enemies or bought at the merchant can be inserted for increased firepower or better shielding. The merchant, once unlocked, is accessible every five minutes through the use of a teleporter. If the enemies come too close, the player can perform a dodge-move like in ClockStone's first game Avencast: Rise of the Mage making the combat more action-oriented.

The game also features a multiplayer-coop-mode for up to three players to experience the story together. Once the player has finished the game once, an additional difficulty level is unlocked with the character starting from the beginning but in the state he was at the end of the game and higher level enemies awaiting him.