Capes – Who doesn't love being a hero, let alone… coordinating and controlling your own team of heroes!

Instead of a dark, dirty cyberpunk world or a medieval adventure setting, you now have to venture into King City, a city full of assassins from The Company. To fight this formidable force, an underground squad was formed by the former hero Doctrine, with the goal of rescuing the heroes being hunted, defeating The Company and restoring peace to the city.

So what will be the fate of the team? Let's follow their footsteps and find out with MarkGame!

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Vivid storyline!

You have probably experienced superhero genres “five or seven times” in thousands of contexts: chivalrous and adventurous like Marvel, dark and full of politics like The Boys and Invincible…

Capes lying on the border between these two contexts – although leaning more towards humor to reduce the later heaviness of the plot, but still enough to show the wit in the storytelling style and creating the superhero team – the “Gen Z” boys and girls with unique designs and personalities such as Ignis who is always busy “livestreaming” while on duty, or Rebound who always tries to tease his teammate Facet.

In a chaotic world ruled by The Company, every resident of King City is in their sights – especially those with superpowers will be eliminated or captured, and those who stand in their way will be mercilessly murdered. However, this does not affect the characters' sense of humor – nor their common goal in fighting against this dark corporation.

The design of the “reclusive” superheroes under the control of The Company is inspired by Marvel characters such as Human Torch, Quicksilver and even… Professor X, as well as a diverse array of “super” enemies such as Crashdamage, the embodiment of Rhino, or Primax, a version of… the villain Tony Stark!

Each character is also Capes spends a lot of time portraying their personalities and unique abilities in detail – a very important point in coordinating them to overcome each main and side mission in the game, when you only have 8 members to experience and about 3-4 members for each mission.

The limitation in the number of characters, fortunately, is compensated by the close relationship between them: every moment the characters exchange or talk to each other makes the writer laugh, especially in the name of the game – Capesknown as the hero with the cape, but no one in the group… wears it!

Each character is also Capes spends a lot of time portraying their personalities and unique abilities in detail – a very important point in coordinating them, in order to overcome each main and side quest in the game.

Challenging brain teaser gameplay!

Like any turn-based tactics game, each mission is a chessboard with 3-4 characters – or even just 1 person in stealth missions, requiring players to carefully calculate the number of movement and attack points, understand each type of enemy and the moves in the game to deal with each one, rescue the “unwilling” residents stuck in the crossfire, and at the same time avoid… attacking each other.

As mentioned above, Capes brings 8 characters divided into three different lines: Attack, Defense and Special Support. Each character has its own unique skills from normal attacks, teleportation to Ultimate – which is only activated when performing certain actions corresponding to each person. For example, Facet will launch a move with thousands of crystal fragments in each area that can be touched, or Weathervane with the ability to release storms to “sweep” enemies in front of him.

From the environment to the position of each character in Capes All of these encourage players to pay attention to increase their chances of winning the game, instead of just moving and attacking in set turns: for example, controlling Ignis into a fire will make her absorb them for her Ultimate and… extinguish the fire, Mercurial can run and knock the opponent down a cliff or down… the rooftop; or just within 3 squares of the area next to teammates, players can activate coordinated moves with them to diversify their attacks, for example, Weathervane and Mercurial will “beat” the opponent and make the guy next to them “dizzy” before disarming them for 2 turns.

Not only that, the main and side quests in each level require you to learn and combine different types of characters appropriately, in order to earn experience points to unlock more skills and achieve the highest upgrade point – which is the unit that unlocks the main skills of the game. Thanks to that, each upgrade will open up more attack methods and “harmony” coordination with separate teammates, helping to increase the replay value significantly.

The level design, enemies and accompanying missions are also quite diverse, when the player sometimes has to protect residents or destroy certain structures, approach enemies stealthily or have to understand their defense methods to choose the right attack method – by hovering the mouse over them to read information such as turns, life points and secondary skills.

From the environment to the position of each character in Capes Both encourage players to pay attention to improve their chances of winning the game, instead of just moving and attacking in set turns.

But what if you accidentally “misstep” or accidentally choose a character that is not suitable for the terrain and enemies? Don’t worry, because the game save system and character selection are very comfortable to create conditions for you to play again, experience the abilities of other characters to exploit more experience points, complete more side quests or destroy enemies more easily.

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The unavoidable “kryptonite” pills!

While offering diversity in the cast of characters, their skills, and their combinations, the way to complete each level in Capes It is somewhat linear, although the game initially feels quite “open” in terms of choosing moves and characters.

It's hard to say this is a negative point when this is just an independent game with a small development team, but if you come to Capes and expect to experience tactics and moves your way – while still achieving the highest upgrade points or experience, this probably isn't the game for you.

To be more precise, each level in the game is like a chessboard, with only… one best way to solve the puzzle to get the maximum score – if the player brings the right type of character with the right skills at the beginning. You also have countless sub-puzzles, but the results will be… insignificant.

Although this contributes to pushing players to “unlock” more skills and characters to return to the next level, this experience unintentionally makes the initial gameplay quite… difficult and time-consuming, especially when you have to get used to new characters that are limited in skills, but have many “OP” moves only when you get close to the end of the game.

In return, the saving grace for “plowing” the game like that is that your characters will “sweep” the entire previous level “as easy as pie”!

Capes also tries to create a highlight in choosing Cel-shaded graphics to create the feeling that you are “playing” a story, but the game's presentation is still quite messy when the cutscenes are sometimes between two 3D characters talking to each other, sometimes just 2D images of those characters communicating!

At least it's a fairly technically stable game for the minimum 20-30 hours of experience you'll get – not bad for a debut title from the studio!

how to complete each level in Capes It's somewhat linear, though the game initially feels quite “open” in terms of both move and character choices.