Slaycation Paradise is a fun enough game for a few hours. I did everything except complete the game on Hard, since that effectively requires replaying every level two more times. There is no option to just select Hard mode on a level to begin with, and the game just isn't exciting enough to keep me entertained for two more playthroughs.

I was sadly quite bored towards the end. Everything became too repetitive. Building defense structures was no longer necessary (except for the final bosses to save time). Waiting 60 seconds for the portal to open so that I could finish a mission became a chore. Simply put, the game does not end on a high note.

The missions are mostly on the same few levels (which are quite large) but just reused over and over. Sometimes a mission is restricted to a specific part of the map in earlier missions. At least the missions that do exist are quite different from one another.

There's no grand story connecting everything together, which is a shame. Some missions are quests that people give you, but that's about it. When you get the completion meter to 100%, the credits don't roll or show a screen that congratulates the player. The mission ends just like any other. The lack of a good story (or any story really) is the other major problem this game has, in my opinion.

There are other minor annoyances, such as not being able to switch to a weapon in your inventory during gameplay — you can only switch to weapons you find during a mission, but then can't switch back to your previous one if you don't like it, unless you can find yet another one.

By default, X on an Xbox controller does multiple things — pick up objects (hold X), open gates or boxes (hold X) or pick up items on the ground and immediately place them in your inventory and not switch to them (tap X). On a number of occasions, I thought I was holding X to open a door, but instead I ended up switching to a bad weapon that was nearby on the floor, causing the remainder of the level to need to be played with a weapon that I didn't like.

Once you get the magic wand (which in my playthrough was probably around 25% of the way into the game), you won't want any other weapon. You may need to use a flame thrower for a specific mission and achievement, but otherwise the magic wand feels very OP. It has no reload time, fires rapidly, and the projectiles change trajectory to fly towards the enemies like a homing missile — or perhaps lightning is a better analogy.

When you die during a mission, you can restart or go chose to go back to the main hub area. If you go back to the main hub area, you have to spend another ~40 seconds walking to the furthest point to get back to the mission select screen. I wish this were more streamlined.

The music is actually pretty good, but it seems to be one track per level, and there aren't that many levels. Hence, the music gets quite repetitive and outstays its welcome. There is also no voice acting, which I think would have helped sell the quest missions, particularly since there is no real story to speak of. Instead, you just have to read bits of text like a slice of a visual novel.

The action is frantic and fun at times, but sometimes the things I was trying to collect (which gravitate towards the player once a particular ability is unlocked) would look too similar to an enemy projectile. In the beginning of the game, I would frequently get hit until I learned to pay closer attention to the shape and not the colour of the things heading my way.

One gameplay issue that was quite annoying was that your character will not shoot uphill or downhill. If you are walking down a slope that the enemy is standing in the middle of, you will not hit the enemy with any projectile unless you are basically standing right next to that enemy — in which case, you might as well just use a melee attack.

Performance under Proton on a HoloISO box with an RX 6900 XT was great. 4k, max detail, high frame rate. I had to go back and check that the game wasn't a native GNU/Linux binary. This is a game made with Unity FWIW.

I was curious about the Affordable Acquisition developers, but information is scarce. It would be interesting to know where they are located and how many people were involved in the project. There are also other unknowns, such as what the "Fun" slider in the settings area does. I tried turning it all of the way down, but couldn't immediately spot any difference.

This game does not have multiplayer. There are NPCs you can find and will assist you (if you can find them — one is very difficult to locate, so you'll probably need a guide) but the NPCs don't unlock achievements or anything special. In fact, for missions where you need to kill X number of enemies by doing a specific type of damage such as fire, the NPCs can be a pain and rob you of your kills while the enemies are still burning. I think that, given the lack of a story, this game would be perfect for multiplayer if such an option existed. Having said that, my intention was always to play it single player anyway.

I'm surprised that there aren't more achievements for a game like this. There could be achievements for finding all of the NPCs, unlocking all of the weapon blueprints, getting a weapon to a particular level, killing an enemy with every weapon type, killing X number of enemies... all kinds of things. As it stands, there are very few remaining achievements that unlock towards the end of the game.

I think that if you get the game on sale, it's not a bad way to spend a few hours. I didn't encounter any bugs or performance issues. It has had a surprising amount of polish for such a little-known game (screen shake effects, rumble, nice fire animations and explosions, etc.), but I also can't help but see a lot of missed opportunities that are holding it back from being something above average, and the developers have stated that they are not developing the game further.

The Candy Man CAN recommend Slaycation Paradise