The protagonist is on the right. The giant beast on the left used to be her pet goat.
Driven Out is a 2D Side View Hack and Slash game, developed by Jens Kolhammar and released for PC, PS4 and Xbox One on October 18th, 2019.It was just an typical day full of hard work for the unnamed farmer in the approximate medieval era, when one day, a strange object falls out of the sky next to you. Almost immediately, a black knight shows up and tries to kill her and claim the artifact, but he stumbles and falls, dropping his sword. Before long, she's using it to cut her way through first the other knights, and then a wide assortment of ever-weirder enemies.
Tropes present in this game:
- Action Girl: The unnamed protagonist, who cuts her way through a swathe of most improbable foes, all of whom would seemingly outrank her.
- Armor Is Useless: Played largely straight at first. The protagonist, a barefoot peasant woman wearing only thin clothes, has three hitpoints. The enemy warriors who either wear chainmail or full plate armor have four.
- Attack Its Weak Point: The giant beetles have "only" 5 HP, but are covered in their hard shell. Thus, the first attack you strike on them simply flips them over on their back, which gives you the window for two attacks before they get back up.
- Barefoot Poverty: The protagonist is a mere peasant, and so she lacks any shoes.
- Bears Are Bad News: A druid wearing a goat mask is a boss who has a number of animal allies come and attack you, which includes an armored bear.
- Bird People: The third area of the game features both man-sized crows and men with crow heads and wings, who wield axes and possess 10 HP.
- Black Knight: One kicks off the whole plot by trying to kill the protagonist to get an artifact that fell from the sky, but drops his sword and runs off. He then picks up a larger two-handed sword and acts as the first boss of the game.
- Blocking Stops All Damage: Played very much straight. The heroine may get hit by bears' paws, have a fireball spat at her, or an energy projectile shot in her path, but placing a sword in front of all of them ensures no harm will come to pass.
- Bloodless Carnage: The enemies at most bleed a tiny bit when attacked, but expel no blood once they fall down. Some of the corpses already present in the environment do lie in pools of blood, though.
- Breath Weapon: The lizard steed of a rider with two swords near the end of the game can spit fireballs. The actual dragon can obviously do the same, but much faster. Either way, the fireballs are pretty much the only projectile in the game that cannot be parried backwards, only blocked.
- Convection, Schmonvection: Yes, and you can block 3 or 5 fireballs in quick succession, but this will not heat up the sword in any way, nor will it result in burns of any kind due to the radiated heat.
- Counter-Attack: A crucial gameplay element is parrying the enemies' attacks, and then attacking while they are vulnerable.
- Creepy Crows: The first enemy of the game's third area are man-sized crows who can easily beat the player with their wings, let alone flying forward to peck with their beak.
- Dual Wielding: The beetle boss of the giant mushroom section wields four swords. Luckily, the swords he is actually about to attack with give off a glow, though it's easy to miss, especially when multiple swords start glowing.
- There are also a couple of Middle Eastern-looking warriors near the end of the game who dual-wield swords.
- And later on, there's a Dalek-like Brain in a Jar that has three swords rotating on its platform.
- Dying as Yourself: Whereas the basic werewolves begin as men but fight and die as vulpine humanoids, their boss is encountered as a pure, four-legged wolf of an enormous size, but turns to his "real" appearance as a young and handsome man right before dying.
- Enemy Civil War: There's one instance where a crow-man and a frog with a sword and shield are duelling each other. It's mainly an opportunity for the player to hit the crow-man in the back with no retaliation.
- Everything Fades: Averted. While the enemies may not bleed much, their dead bodies will persist throughout the entire game.
- From Nobody to Nightmare: The player character was apparently just a mere, unnotable peasant all her life. Then, a strange artifact drops in her field, a knight drops a sword, and before long she's cut her way through dozens of ever-stronger and more improbable opponents.
- Fungus Humongous: When confronting a Necromancer for the first time, he teleports her to a land of giant mushrooms, where all the enemies are giant insects.
- Giant Mook: The second enemy you face is a knight in full plate and with a two-handed sword, who is about 1,5 times taller than the player. His size means that he doesn't fall over when hit with a sword like the normal-sized swordsmen, but otherwise, he still has the same four hitpoints just like them. The following knights much like him have 6 and 8 HP, though, even though the only difference is the darker armor and red plume on the helmet.
- Likewise, the basic werewolves with 5 HP are interspersed with the much larger and taller ones who have 7 (but cannot teleport around to compensate for that.)
- Good Old Fisticuffs: In the area where you fight monkeys with swords, their boss, a silverback gorilla, just uses its fists. Considering that it is pretty much the only opponent in the game that cannot be parried, it works.
- Heroines Prefer Swords: Your character spends the entirety of the game with a single, two-handed sword.
- Magic Pants: Played straight for the werewolves as they transform.
- Mook Maker: The large heron with a staff generates "normal" herons that fly straight at the player to ram them with their beak. Parrying them at the right time deflects them 180 degrees and sends them right back at the mage heron.
- The next enemy after this is a necromancer who raises up undead werewolves. These collapse into dust after one hit, but he can raise a lot of them, both in front and behind the heroine.
- Nameless Narrative: Nobody in the game is ever named.
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Nintendo Hard: The game is absolutely reflex-driven, and though short, it can be very difficult for the unprepared. - Justified Extra Lives: The magical kettle-like thing that falls out of the sky in the opening is a relic that'll recreate a clone of the player character in the event of her death.
- Random Events Plot: First, a mysterous artifact drops from the sky near a random farmer. A knight tries to kill her for it, but drops his sword, and she cuts through his regiment with it. Then, suddenly, one seemingly small area gets ravaged by werewolves, crow-men, a necromancer and a druid. After she deals with all of them, the heroine then goes off to fight some frogs and monkeys with swords, along with other enemies, such as a dragon. Then, the aliens show up and try to kidnap everybody, but she parries their blasters and destroys them as well.
- Red Sky, Take Warning: The game begins on a fine summer day with a bright blue sky, as you have to fight your way through the knights. Then, you enter the church, and fight werewolves there. Once you walk out of its other door, the sky is suddenly blood-red, and everything past the church is being ravaged by Bird People raiders. Once you clear this area, your path is blocked by a tombstone, so you backtrack, fight a necromancer in the church, then walk back out...and find that the sky in the first zone is fine once again!
- Slow Laser: There's a robot enemy by the end of the game that can shoot discrete purple projectiles from its mouth. Unlike dragon's fireballs, these can be parried backwards.
- Sword Plant: Played for laughs in the opening, when a black knight runs so intently toward the protagonist to get the magical relic, that he stumbles and falls, the sword flying out of his hands in an arc and eventually planting right before the protagonist's feet. She then claims it as her own, and continues to fight with it throughout the game.
- Teleport Spam: The basic werewolves regularly phase in and out, and can easily teleport on the other side of the player character. Giant ones thankfully cannot do that, though.
- Tennis Boss: The mage heron never attacks you on its own - instead it creates normal-sized storks that fly forward in a straight line to ram the heroine with their beaks, and then you parry them, and deflect them right back at the mage heron to damage it. After getting a few hits, it learns to also generate them behind the heroine, so that parrying them will still send them in a wrong direction.
- Transformation Is a Free Action: You can run right up to the basic half-naked men in the church, but you simply won't be allowed to hit them up until they finish clutching their head and transforming into the werewolves.
- Wicked Wasps: In a land of giant mushrooms, there are some enormous wasp hives: you only get to see a little bit of them from your perspective on the ground, but even that is clearly several times larger than the human protagonist. Once, approached, these hives also spawn wasps; the spawning only happens once, but these wasps are large enough to wield lances, all while dancing through the air like crazy. Luckily, they die in one hit.
- Wolf Man: The second area of the game is the church. When you enter it, the swordsmen and knights you fought earlier are replaced by half-naked, unarmed men...who transform into werewolves right as you approach them.
- You Get Knocked Down, You Get Back Up Again: Averted for the hapless chainmail swordsmen at the start of the game. After they lose a hit point, they get knocked to the ground, and it's very much in your interest to keep slashing so as to hit them right as they are trying to get back up, again and again, until they won't stand up again any more.Th
