A Look at Door Kickers

The last couple of weeks have been pretty brutal in terms of workload for me, and I've had to postpone writing this piece for longer than I would have liked. As you can see, however, it is finally published. This blog entry is a little bit different from the previous ones in the sense that this time I will write about a game that I only very recently got into playing, whereas the previous posts have been about games I have spent a lot of time playing already in the past. In this post, I want to write about a very unique game: Killhouse Games' Door Kickers. Before moving on to discuss what the game is all about, however, I want to acknowledge and give my sincerest thanks to the folks over at Killhouse Games for being so generous as to donate the game for me to write about it. So, again, thanks to Dan Dimitrescu and co. over at Killhouse Games!

The Bigger Context of Door Kickers

In my previous post, I wrote about turn-based small squad tactics games and how they are a very underrepresented genre. I first got introduced to the genre with Silent Storm years and years ago. Since then, I've tried out many of the entries in the genre, and quite liked them for the most part. Still, there was always something missing from the genre up until Door Kickers came along. That something is focusing on SWAT-themed urban combat. Now, granted, urban combat has previously been featured in small-squad tactics games to some extent, but it has never really been the primary focus in them. Furthermore, the modern day SWAT theme has, to my knowledge, never been done before in the genre (and I've looked). What I basically want to say here is that Door Kickers scratches an itch that I have had for years.

A breaching charge goes boom.

What Is Door Kickers All About?

Door Kickers is a top-down tactical game about managing a small SWAT squad in an urban setting with the aim of taking out bad guys that have holed up in the premises. On a more practical level, Door Kickers is a game about planning your approach from the initial spawn points, peeking under doors with a snake camera, planning your entry into rooms, kicking down doors, throwing flashbangs, and shooting bad guys. And honestly, that's pretty much it. The game has a very clearly defined formula that it utilizes, and it doesn't really try to break the formula in any way. I think the very tight focus of the game is both its greatest strength and its biggest weakness. The upside is that Door Kickers does what it sets out to do very well - it's a lot of fun to carefully clear buildings in tight coordination, room by room. The downside is that there really is nothing more to Door Kickers than clearing rooms - it's a one-trick pony. People who look for a varied gameplay experience (akin to sandbox games, for example) will not find it here. Instead, what you will find is a very tightly crafted light SWAT "simulator" that only does one thing, but it does it well.

Well, this is a dilemma - how to save the hostage in the middle?

How is Door Kickers Different?

In addition to the unique theme, the gameplay in Door Kickers differentiates itself from most other tactical small squad management games in three ways. First, Door Kickers is not turn-based, but rather it is played in real-time with the option of freely pausing the game at any time. A similar system has previously often been used in the context of Western (old school) RPGs, like Baldur's Gate and Knights of the Old Republic, for example. Secondly, since there are no turns, there is also no need for an action point system, which has been a staple in most turn-based tactics games, like XCOM: Enemy Unknown and Silent Storm. Thirdly, Door Kickers also doesn't utilize squares or hexagons for movement like XCOM: EU does, but rather the movement is completely free, similarly to Silent Storm or Frozen Synapse.

It's important to avoid blocking other units' line of fire, as indicated by the red line.

The Core Gameplay

As I already mentioned above, Door Kickers is a game centered around a tight core concept of clearing buildings of bad guys, and the core gameplay remains largely the same throughout the game. You start each mission in a deployment screen, where you can select which units you want to use on that particular mission, customize their gear, and select where you want the units to spawn. Once you are happy with your set-up for the mission, you move on to the actual action/combat phase.

The deployment screen. This map only has one possible spawn point, most have at least two.

The unit loadout screen in the deployment phase. Here you equip the team with gear suited for each mission.

In the main combat phase, you control your units simply by drawing lines of where you want them to move. You can control the direction that each unit looks by drawing a line with the right mouse button. Finally, you perform actions, including reloading, throwing a grenade, and switching to a pistol, by right clicking to open an action menu and selecting the desired action. Furthermore, closed doors provide you with a few additional actions, such as simply kicking it open, using a snake cam to look under the door into the room, placing a breaching charge on the door to blow it up, or picking the lock for a more covert entry.

Attempting to go in all sneaky beaky like by picking the lock.

Finally, you can assign actions with "go codes", which means that they are performed when you give the assigned go code ("Alpha, go", etc.). The go codes allow you to easily synchronize multiple actions with one another. A common example of utilizing the go codes is having one unit throw a flashbang into a room and waiting for it to go off before giving the go code to another unit that is waiting to enter the room. Basically, by synchronizing throwing the flashbang and breaching the room you are able to go in instantly after the flash goes off.

Executing the good old two-man bang and clear maneuver on the left.

After you've given your units instructions on what you want them to do, you unpause the game by pressing Spacebar and watch your (carefully laid out) plans play out. Then you pause again, plan your next moves, unpause, etc.

Mission Types

There are quite a few different mission types in Door Kickers. They include, for example:

• Terrorist hunt is the simplest mission type that tasks the player with eliminating all hostiles on the map.
• Bomb disposal is exactly what it sounds like - there is a ticking bomb somewhere on the map, and you have to reach and defuse it before the timer runs out.
• Hostage rescue is a scenario where the bad guys have taken a number of hostages that need to be saved. The task is made more difficult by the fact that the hostages have a nasty tendency to get caught in the cross fire, and a hostage dying immediately fails the mission.
• Stop an execution is a spin on the hostage rescue. Here the bad guys have taken a number of hostages and will execute one of them after a timer ticks down. Obviously, the job of the player is to reach the scene in time and prevent the execution.
• Drug bust missions are ones where you have to raid a drug lab, kill hostile enemies, arrest non-hostile enemies and secure the evidence that lies around. The extra challenge in these missions comes from the fact that the bad guys will start destroying the said evidence as soon as they first discover the player. This means that these missions emphasize maintaining the element of surprise for as long as possible, by going in all sneaky beaky like. Then, once you inevitably get spotted, all caution gets thrown into the wind and it's a mad dash to try and secure all the evidence lying around before it gets destroyed.
• Escort missions task the player with finding a VIP somewhere on the map, reaching him or her and escorting the VIP to a safe zone.

Gotta haul ass to stop the execution!

Classes

Door Kickers features five classes, each with their own specialization and use:

• Pointman: The most mobile class that is limited to only carrying a pistol. The Pointman's job is to be the first guy in through a door. The class excels at close to mid range fights and tight quarters.
• Assault: The backbone of most teams. These are versatile units that wield rifles or submachineguns and pack a lot of fire power on medium to long distances. Most of the time, my teams consist of a couple of Pointmen and Assault units.
• Shield: These are units that come equipped with a ballistic shield and a pistol. They move very slowly but can provide some cover for other teammates. Personally, I've not found much use for these guys. They seem to die too fast to be useful as meat shields, they lack any serious firepower, and move at a painfully slow pace. Maybe upgrading their shields from the initial starting equipment to something better would help them to actually do their job (to draw fire and survive), but then again, why not just bring in more firepower instead to avoid being shot at in the first place?
• Breacher: These units pack a shotgun, which makes them king in very close quarters. They can also breach locked doors, foregoing the need for carrying around a hammer on another teammate. They suffer horribly in fights that take place outside of very close quarters, which severely limits their utility. In the right circumstances, however, they are devastating.
• Stealth: The stealth units are by far the most interesting of the five classes. Unlocking may drastically change your playstyle, from always going in hard and fast to very carefully navigating through the levels and coordinating intricate synchronized stealth takedowns. They are also crucial in mission types that emphasize covert action - i.e. drug busts. I am still learning to use these units to their full potential, but they do quite often find themselves into my teams in addition to a Pointman and Assaults.

Extra Bells and Whistles

There are some elements that have been introduced into the game to spice up the overall gameplay experience. First, there are some light squad advancement elements, like Doctrine Points that improve the units' abilities in handling different types of weapons (a simple perk system, in other words), earning experience and ranks for individual units, and earning stars that are used as the in-game currency to unlock new weapons and equipment.

The star system is something that seems to have raised some controversy among the game's fan base: there have been complaints that it is an unnecessary content gating tool, considering that Door Kickers is currently a pay-to-play PC release. I somewhat agree; I think that the star system is uncomfortably close to ones commonly found in "free-to-play" mobile games, and I'm not really sure what it accomplishes here. Now, Door Kickers is also being developed for mobile devices, so maybe that aspect of mobile game development has simply leaked over to the PC version as well. The good thing is that success and failure is determined by the amount of planning instead of the gear and weapons one has in his or her disposal. Still, I can definitely see why completionists would be annoyed by having to grind start to unlock all weapons, and I think the system is overall somewhat questionable, at least on the PC.

The perk tree. Picture taken from
<http://www.macgamestore.com/images_screenshots/door-kickers-23858.jpg>

Secondly, there is a campaign mode, although its development is still underway. As it is currently, the campaign mode is basically a collection of regular missions that share a common theme, like drug busts. Some of the campaign missions are bigger in scale than the regular single missions - they not only have larger maps, but often also increase the maximum number of units deployed to eight from the regular four. This increased size helps to distinguish the campaign missions from the regular single missions. Unfortunately, I found that managing eight units at a time was starting to become unwieldy and overly time consuming. I think that sticking to four, or perhaps six, units would be ideal. Another component that is found in the campaign mode, but not in the single missions, is that the deaths of your troopers are permanent. Furthermore, injuries sustained during a campaign will persist onto the next mission, but will heal eventually. Contrary to what one might expect, there is no actual story to be found in the campaign mode as of now, although I imagine some narrative will be added at some point.

There are, as of now, five campaigns.

Some Criticism

Here, I have collected some issues with the game that I would like too see addressed. The first one is admittedly nitpicky, but the other three are more serious issues. First, it's inconvenient that you can't see which doors are locked in the deployment phase, because that knowledge can affect your loadout choices. For example, if there are no locked doors, there is no point in bringing a lockpick machine, and you would be better off bringing stinger grenades instead. As it currently is, you have to go to the battle phase, hover your mouse over each door individually, and then restart the mission and make adjustments to your loadout. Secondly, the story mode is, as of now, incomplete. Third, the star unlock system seems like a free-to-play feature for the mobile versions. Frankly, it feels quite out-of-place in the PC version. Finally, managing eight units in certain missions is cumbersome.

Conclusion

As I stated earlier, Door Kickers is a tightly focused game that sets out to do one thing, and one thing only. Fortunately, it does that one thing well. Door Kickers is not a very intricate game in terms of how you interact with it - there is, after all, only a small number of possible actions you can perform in the game. Rather, the intricacy, and what makes the game interesting, comes from the map design. What Door Kickers is, in my opinion, ultimately all about, is using a small number of possible actions in changing situations to come up with a way to meet the requirement that have been set out for you to achieve. That was basically a very convoluted way of saying that the point of the game is to solve the challenges presented to you by the different maps in the game. In fact, Door Kickers is actually much more of an abstract puzzle game than it is an action game, or even a squad management game. Door Kickers also scores your performance in each mission with a three star scale, which brings in an element of trying to find an optimal strategy for each mission; a type of a score attack approach, if you will.

Refining your strategies for each individual map is a real challenge for completionists.

Giving Door Kickers a "final verdict" is actually quite simple - I believe the game divides people into three types: 
1) People who like games such as XCOM: EU or Silent Storm will, most likely, also enjoy Door Kickers. Compared to those two, Door Kickers provides a rather similar, but more tightly focused, accessible, and bite-sized experience (meaning that a single mission won't last for an hour). On the other hand, I doubt Door Kickers has a similar level of lasting appeal due to its more limited scope. 
2) There are surely people who are intrigued by the thought of managing a SWAT team, and get all excited by planning a perfectly synchronized two-point entry into a room with carefully planned flashbangs and angle checks. These people have already bought the game. As a sidenote for this group, go check out a TV series called Flashpoint. It's about a Canadian SWAT-like unit, and it's awesome. 
3) For the people who don't belong into either of the above mentioned categories, i.e. ones who are not interested in small-squad management games or SWAT businesss, there is nothing for them here. They should probably spend their time and money on something else instead.

And that pretty much wraps up this post. Strangely enough, although this post turned out to be rather massive, I feel like I barely even scratched the surface of Door Kickers. Further discussion has to be continued later in another post, however. Until then, keep kicking down doors.