Early days, but absolutely ace.

That's not a kic... wait... maybe... yes... there we go.

What Door Kickers nails is balancing two approaches to its combat puzzles. If you know its ins and outs then you can elaborately plot out in a single go a "solution." Otherwise, it plays excellently as a more reactive real-time experience. It's the principle of "being accessible whilst maintaining its depth" being adhered to wonderfully here!

At the time of writing, version "0.3" is looking pretty swell. It's complete with online co-op via matchmaking (2-4 players), a detailed level editor (no Steam Workshop quite yet), and many many hours of scenarios that act in themselves as a graduated tutorial.

If you're not familiar with the original game, you won't be familiar with how familiar its sequel looks and plays here. The emphasis is "more and better." Plenty of new additions that other reviews have mentioned like sprinting, crouching, wall charges, frag grenades, etc. As a tactics game, the more micro-strategy you can employ moment to moment the better. Quality of life features are looking good.

The freeform planning of dragging a soldier's route is just so intuitive (and excellent) compared to some of its contemporaries like Frozen Synapse that complaints devolve into really micro stuff. Why can't easily stop a moving soldier? Why can't I plot multiple soldier paths at once?

They're genuine criticisms for sure, but risk stealing the focus from some of the genius implementations here. The way in co-op you can draw real-time marker board-esque annotations on the battlefield to communicate with co-op partners. Just excellent.

Indeed, my biggest single complaint is only the micromanagement involved if anything. Having to select one of eight or so soldiers in a small space is currently set to be a punishment allocated in hell unless an update makes it slightly more manageable. Some keybindings to easily select units or the optional colour system the original had might assuage these issues.

Otherwise, the visuals are a gorgeous thing to behold in motion. Being able to zoom in all the way and see that this truly is a 3D engine experienced from a top-down perspective is great stuff. The destructible environments are also impressive.

Whilst the game is lacking in raw content for returning "door-kickers," I've found the wealth of scenarios to be more than filling in the short time I've played it. The promise of yet more refined mechanics, over a hundred "handcrafted missions," more unit types, more environments, more weapons, more gear, modding tools, etc, is enticing indeed.

This is not an early access release you particularly have to worry about investing in early given the developers at the helm. They're attentive on the forums and updates are coming thick and fast - enough that this review is already a relic.

To summarise, plenty of doors to already kick, and a frightening number yet to come. For a foundation, this really is as good as it gets.

Now just add the option to reassure a door and tell them everything is going to be alright and you'll get added to Wholesome Games!