Scaling and Review Notes

Personal Hours Played: 1.3

Review Disclaimer

Every game ranked was played, but also scaled based on research, talking to developers & your feedback. The priority with the scale's initial design was to compare similarity on relatively objective features - so it doesn't claim to include reviews of the depth and clarity you'd get at a games journalism site, nor the intensive time played you might get from player reviews on steam. We try to incorporate and link all of that along with a 'review scale' that checks for bugs. See the heatmap and breakdown! Time played noted so you can take any notes with a big grain of salt! I can't get to high level gameplay in 850+ games so I heavily research every game. Over 80 game creators let me interview or survey them! I Hope to go back and refine. Please argue or submit your own scores and reviews to be incorporated with credit into the notes and score numbers.

Added or last checked on 11/5/2023

Another game that's been suggested to fans of this genre, but our examination shows it's pretty far from what most will be looking for. This is a wave survival game listed in the Steam Bullet Heaven Fest, but it's hard to say it's a bullet heaven or a survivors-like though it shares some elements.

It has in game abilities to pick from as you level, meta unlocks for some power progression between game modes and procedural generation so it could be called a rogue-lite as much as many of these other games. No damage numbers but the scoring pop up text feels a little like it, so tiny partial score. Knocking it for no controller support in controls check, though not to the negative since the KB+M controls seem fine. It's very action focused so basically the opposite of an auto shooter. Has crouch, run, wall running, climbing, double jumping and so on, alongside aiming and firing controls, challenging you to use a large amount of dexterity to survive.

But some of the controls (especially the "Warp" ability that switches "realities") doesn't make it more fun for me personally, it's just more controls. Overall the combat mechanics and controls are the best (and kind of only) part though, and lead to some fun moments.

There is the "arena" mode and then procedurally generated "destruction." I wasn't able to play much of destruction since the generated levels often had janky wall-run/platforming sections that seemed to have clipping issues. It's interesting because with the meta power creep it certainly has a gameplay mechanic difficulty ramp many arena shooters do not, which has some appeal.

No controller support so had to do some work to play on Steam Deck, which wasn't fun, so played at my desk (and not the TV either) which I don't enjoy as much (reflected with a 0 in the associated column in the review scale.)

I saw some people on YouTube complain about the music but I like it. Overall though it feels like it's missing sounds, enemy variety and weapons, Half Life era graphics (but with less detail) for a relatively high price and the gameplay is cumbersome compared to many other wave survival / horde shooter FPS games. And no real "horde" either. Again, only 3 guns? Where are the weapons?

It's made by a learning solo developer so I don't want to be too hard on it, but it's hard to justify the price point with what's here. Feels like it should be early access for 99 cents, maybe would even make more in sales. But if you can get into it with keyboard and mouse and don't mind the price, some compare it to titanfall and seem to be having fun with it. I wanted to like it since I enjoy simple arena FPS games and will play against CS bots for hours on a tiny map. But it didn't let me, due to bugs and janky implementations. This unfortunately seems to be the finished state of the game. I feel for the newbie dev as this likely sounds harsh, they show promise if they keep learning.