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.