Yesterday Sang-Froid was brought to my attention and I thought it was going to be another incredibly rough indie game that had promise, one that probably wasn't ever going to come out, instead I found myself pleasantly surprised and intrigued. Sang-Froid is a game that mixes strategy and action in some very familiar ways that are some-what reminiscent of tower defense hybrids like Orcs Must Die! or Sanctum, but it is a different sort of game. You do set out elaborate plans to deal with waves of enemies, but unlike both of the previously games this one lets you see all upcoming waves and you have to plan for all of them right from the start. Once you have your traps set you get pulled into the game as you run around as a big lumberjack who can take a decent number of hits and deal out a lot of damage with his axe or his slow but powerful musket. The traps in this are very non-typical and it is one of the many ways Sang-Froid makes itself different from every other game. For instance, you can place use bait to pull your enemies towards you, or you can set up towers that let you quickly slide from one tower to another across a large map, or you can set up fires that terrify enemies. It all makes sense once you realize that many of the enemies are wolves and werewolves, which naturally would fear fire, but just because they fire it doesn't mean it will hold them away forever, eventually they will gather up courage and move closer.


On each map you have to defend specific buildings and their is plenty of information available to help you do that. At the beginning of each game you can see all of the waves for a map and you have to ration out your money so you may have enough traps for each set of threats. Each wave can have different enemies coming from different directions and each group of enemies can be attacking different buildings. There are traps you can set up to instantly kill small enemies like wolves, but anything as strong as a werewolf is going to take a lot more and there are many different ways you can tackle each situation. There are fire walls you can use, wolf traps, hanging nets, spiritual totems, bait, bonfires, towers, ballistas and more. You also have tow characters to choose from and each of them can be leveled up with various skills that look to be similar to an RPG skill system. The game is definitely a bit rough and they originally had a release date of Summer 2012, which obviously isn't accurate at this point, but it does look like it could be a lot of fun and be different than everything else. Check out their newest gameplay video, with commentary from one of the developers from Artifice Studios, and get a good look at Sang-Froid.
Main Website: http://www.sangfroidgame.com/

-Written by Sean Cargle