Scaling and Review Notes

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.

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Scaling and Review Notes

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.

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Scaling and Review Notes

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.

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Scaling and Review Notes

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.

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Scaling and Review Notes

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.

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Scaling and Review Notes

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.

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Scaling and Review Notes

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.

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Scaling and Review Notes

Personal Hours Played: 5.1

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 11/6/2023

This survivors-like has a kind of Crysis meets Starship Troopers vibe, with perhaps the wit more on the side of Crysis (sparse, but sometimes surprises you.) Starship Troopers vibe is mostly just due to the hordes of often buggy aliens swarming towards you. Or there's the obvious inspiration: Crimsonland.

Has a ton of menus shelving all kinds of customizations like equipment, starting weapons and upgrades. While I appreciated the customization found in many of these areas the finding of them was less enjoyable. I tend to prefer that when I open a game I can just ram the A button and end up in a run of some sort. This one brings you into an upgrade menu dead end, not that uncommon perhaps, but the LB over to the map, and then zoom in, and then select mission, and then select my loadout again and then finally into the action.. feels like it could be simplified.

Lots of missions but maps aren't really different. Kind of an arena shooter, though it's not a small box. Feels more oldschool in terms of set up / grind / "missions", though it's technically the same stuff you'd unlock or do as activities in any other survivors-like.

Has quick toggle button to switch to automatic which is honestly much better than manual fire imho, especially because you don't really have to choose because you can direct the fire with the right stick whenever you feel like. (You can even unlock auto leveling if you feel like it) That's one of my preferred methods of control for single stick shooters with an aim option, though my special interest at the moment is obviously the ones that basically have no aiming and force you to move interestingly.

This one does have some of those moves like orbiting weapons and so on, so despite the stylings more often seen in first person shooters, it respects a lot of the genre conventions for more than just bullets. I thought my time so far with it was fun, never really felt like the runs were dragging and even early in the game there were actual choices that seemed varied. I appreciate the impactful feeling level options - even if the gameplay impact of getting 40% increase to attack is exactly the same as 10%, it saying 40% on the upgrade card is fun. And the game doesn't go too far, obviously 1000% feels fake.

The design, when I understand it, is often smart like that (and some seems badly translated at the moment, but it's still Early Access). Thought this was going to get a neutral score in 'subtle humor' but it actually got me laughing a few times so full point.

Perhaps because overall it feels a little dry compared to whimsical titles like Elemental Survivors, the moments of levity stand out a lot. My pod drops on a little alien and it does 666 damage and squishes it to start the level. Level 2? Two little aliens. I'm ashamed but I laughed. Less ashamed to laugh at the fact you can unequip your HUD and ability to fire in your meta-progression and customization area. Guess who accidentally did that for a second.

I think the vibe usually worked for me when I was actually in game. The UI actually in a run is solid, nice big clear level choices and so on. So many of my issues are purely with how complicated it is to get in there. Probably extra fun if you really like to grind for odd goals and challenges.

Very solid for a solo dev early access title imho. If this came out for PS3 I would have died.

Scaling and Review Notes

Personal Hours Played: 2.3

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

A brotato-style survivors-like with a fun (for me anyway) inventory management twist to powering up. It's fully released but I need more time with it so let's consider this a first look review. I'll be checking on discord and with the devs on the features in the comparison ranking.

It's a 3D style game and based to my prior exposure I can't help sometimes feeling like it's a smooth Halls of Torment. The weapons play pretty differently though, or at least feel different. The isometric shift is also more intense, which can make it a little harder to avoid enemies at times. Has dash, doesn't seem you can map it to the left side so 0 still on one handed.

Luckily your weapons will be heavily favoring the closest enemy so often you're not worrying as much about one close tag. You get XP from to level up, which determines how much inventory you unlock on the next round. You gather currency from the ground to spend on round end. We'll call this a store and not level choices.

Worked fine on Steam Deck but had issues getting controller to work on PC, had to use a custom profile by some other steam user.

Personally I don't like when rounds end while there are still enemies and then it says the wave is complete, but when the timer is up for the round, well, it's over. Then it sends me to the store to power up and puts me in a new room with new enemies.

A fair amount of the arena shooters do stuff like that, but I much much prefer the more modern survivors-like trend of having organic waves and leveling up with a simple dialog that then drops you back into the same exact gameplay. This makes and the small arena makes it a "brotato-style" game which is another subsubgenre defined in the terms.

I like that I can see my DPS if I want. Low score in multiple stages because moving between the rooms feels so repetitive. While I prefer more exploration, I was still charmed by what's here.

My partner has basically no patience for the inventory management mechanic, but personally I like the blocks, the picking new inventory spaces to unlock, items from a large array of options, and then shifting things around. Well, mostly. I admit I often play games in this genre to turn my brain off more or at least just think about statistics, but it does help the game stand out and is utilized in interesting ways for proximity buffs, not just a matter of putting stuff in there.

Really then, with the short rounds, the game became all about the inventory to me, which is perhaps the point. I spend about as much time thinking and fiddling with it as I do in the round sometimes. Not complaining. Overall though it felt a tinsy bit dreary to me, missing something. I need to spend more time with it to know if that's a reasonable feeling, but with the enclosed arena shooters I get antsy quick. I could see myself getting very into this on a smaller screen while traveling.

Scaling and Review Notes

Personal Hours Played: 2.1

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 10/14/2023

Included here to test/show the scale, since it's been recommended a few times in public threads about VS-likes for some reason. This is a rogue-lite with some unlockable meta advancement, but it's also a turn-based peggle-like puzzle game.

Nice little game I suppose but the scale allows for -1 to 1 in order to make room for strongly different features to this extent.

Like a few other games on this list I feel it's mostly mentioned to people on sites like reddit since it's also a rogue-lite. It doesn't have much mechanically in common with most games on this list.

Cool though. I think if I hadn't mainlined Peggle for several months in 2007 I would be more interested in learning the mechanics. As it is it's hard to play without the Peggle victory music. If someone mods that in, let me know.

Scaling and Review Notes

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 11/1/2023

Scale scoring from scorecard submitted by Developer. Once evaluated after a couple hours play and some research, will be adjusted and moved up into the ranking proper.

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Scaling and Review Notes

Personal Hours Played: 1500 (ComplexPlane97)

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 11/23/23

Scale scoring from scorecard submitted by player reviewer. Once evaluated after a couple hours play and some research, will be adjusted and moved up into the ranking proper.

Help us rank this game! [Submit Feature Survey]

Scaling and Review Notes

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.

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Scaling and Review Notes

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.

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Scaling and Review Notes

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.

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Scaling and Review Notes

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.

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