[OVERVIEW = 4] An archery sim with excellent physics, hampered by poorly designed controls. [PRESENTATION = 7] (Visuals = 6) Simple but functional. Enemies are human figures with apples for heads, allies are wooden stumps with expanding balloons for heads. (Sound Effects = 5) (Voice Acting = none) (Physics = 9) Enemies ragdoll, apples explode in showers of chunks, the ropes with hanging targets swing properly on impact with arrows, and you can even poke holes in a flag with full cloth physics. (Vibration = none) (Plot = none) [CONTROLS/MECHANICS = 3] (100% Archery Simulator = 3 (on mouse/keyboard)) You have control of 2 arms with 3 joints each: default is the Right wrist, hold E to move the elbow, hold Q to move the shoulder, hold Shift to move the Left hand, move the mouse to move/rotate as appropriate. The left hand holds the bow, and the mouse buttons draw and (if you’re close enough to the right spot) attach the arrow. Once attached, you draw back the arrow with the mouse and let go of the “attach” button. If that sounds unnecessarily complicated, that’s because it is. Ordinarily I love working through complex control schemes, like 1998’s “Jurassic Park Tresspasser” or 2015’s “Octodad: Dadliest Catch,” but these kinds of games require careful design to give you precise control without being too arduous. Probably Archery requires that you position the middle of the bow (left hand) and the end of the arrow (right hand) in 3D space. That COULD have been accomplished by letting you use the mouse for the X and Y axes, and switching to the Left hand by holding Shift, and having the game automatically animate the bend of the elbow and the connection of the arrow to the bow; you would have lost none of the fun of aligning the two limbs to get the targeting right. Instead you have to control 3 joints per arm, which each control differently (sometimes moving the mouse horizontally rotates the joint, sometimes it moves it), for no adequate reason, just to make sure it takes 30 seconds to line up each shot even after an hour of practice. The game even sabotages you by starting out with the bow off to the side, parallel to the ground! Why not keep the bow vertical, the way one fires a bow? A further sabotage is the fact that each time you fire an arrow the bow shifts, so you can’t just course-correct slightly when you miss, you have to totally re-aim from an unknown aiming position with every arrow. It’s sad because there’s some fun to be had here, but it gets way too arduous for even the simpler modes, and absolutely impossible where true precision within a time limit (the shoot-the-hanging-man’s-rope game) is required. I tried this game because the new Virtual Reality archery games coming out look pretty fun, and from Youtube it appears that Probably Archery controls really well with a $600 pair of Razer Hydra motion controllers. But if you watch, all the game is doing is positioning each of the two hands in 3D space with the controllers and self-animating the elbow bend, something it should have done for mouse control. It appears as if the game was designed for motion controllers and then ported (badly) to mouse and keyboard. (Camera = 6) (Physics = 10) Arrows fly with appropriate momentum-related dropoff and everything reacts properly (when you don’t miss). (Friendly AI = none) (Enemy AI = 5) [DESIGN = 6] (Menus = 6) (Level Design = 5) Small arenas. (Difficulty Curve = 3) There’s not really a curve, but the controls make most of the modes too hard. (Upgrade System = None) (Modes = Several Minigames, Multiplayer Horde/Survival Mode) There’s no campaign, just a series of minigames where you’re immovable in a room, hitting targets. The horde mode starts out doable because enemies get close enough for bad aim to work, and there’s a mode where you have an army that fires 50 arrows with you that helps because, again, you don’t need perfect aim. There really needs to be a series of levels, maybe where you’re traveling on a rail as the level shifts, with boss battles, for this to be a full-fledged game. [CONCLUSION] No amount of practice will speed up a procedure where you have to move and rotate 6 individual joints to line up one shot. If I had Razer Hydras, sure, this would be fun, but with mouse and keyboard the game is going to need a major reprogramming for the controls to work.