As someone who plays a lot of Survivor type games, it always intrigues me to see how each game differs from the others. This one does it by almost entirely skirting around the usual gameplay of killing things. It took me way to many runs to figure out that this game doesn't actually want you to kill things. It just wants you to run around for 20 minutes. Unfortunately to finish a map you do have to kill a boss so if you happen to live that long you're still just going to die more than likely. It'll take you too long to kill it and then the Unkillable Clocks will spawn and they'll swarm you.

Even when you've got just about everything maxed out, you have to fight for every run. Meta progression doesn't feel nearly as impactful as it does in other games and requirements have pretty steep scaling for the last level or 2 that make grinding for them feel not worth it. There are 3 maps and then three Cursed maps which are retextured versions of the base maps. 2 of the maps have 2 varieties of mini boss that spawn and one map has 1 miniboss, each map has its own boss.

What I noticed immediately from my initial playing was that the game seemed harder than these games usually feel. Around level 7 or so is when it felt like XP started to drop off and I was running around just trying not to die. This made every run feel like an eternal nightmare of futeily weaving through an increasing horde just trying to collect a few more coins to maybe afford a Meta upgrade. I didn't realize it but my first session must have lasted 7 or 8 hours. Unfortunately the game feels incredibly shallow for how difficult it feels so most of your runs feel like getting kicked in the balls by a kindergartener. Your Dodge Roll is the starting active for most of the unlockable characters and can be replaced during your run, or some characters start with different actives. By far the best one is Mrs. T who starts out with the Healing active. All the others pale in comparison to it bc its only one that actively keeps you alive instead of just staving off death for a couple seconds.

I have 14 and a half hours in the game and I just finished unlocking all the items and I feel no desire to continue trying to complete the 3 cursed maps. Allegedly they unlock 3 new characters, and there may be a secret item or something I haven't unlocked by unlocking everything else, but at this point the game loop is so frustrating that I just don't care. I spent the first half of my game time dying over and over trying to feel like I was making any progress, the next third of my game time feeling like I was making any progress, and the last 20% feeling cheated. This is because the game doesn't tell you that you have to do a run to unlock the boss for the map which you can fight *on the run after* and also doesn't tell you that the unlock order is linear, so I died on the second map a few times, played the 3rd map, beat the 3rd map, and didn't get to do the boss or escape. I just had to die to the endless spawn at the end of the timer. Didn't even get to unlock the boss. So I went back to the 2nd map and did a run to unlock that boss, then did another run to beat the boss, then I got to do it again for the 3rd map. I did most of this after unlocking Mrs T because the difference between feeling like you're being kicked in the balls and feeling like you're kicking the game in the balls is whether or not you have the healing active.

My final complaint about the game is the reroll system. There isn't really a reroll system. You can buy up to 3 from the meta progression tab but while the game says you get 1-3 rerolls per level, what it really means is you get 1-3 rerolls per run, and the cost of obtaining them is not worth the price of admission given how much more expensive they are compared to everything else. This game does not inspire me to play long enough for them to matter, and by the time I could afford them I've done everything and then some.

In the end, I did manage to get 14 hours of gameplay from it and there's still technically a few things I could still do if I really wanted to, but I don't. Ultimately I don't think I'd recommend this game unless running around and dying for 8 hours sounds appealing to you. It's only $5 so I'm not particularly upset with my purchase, but after having the experience I don't think I'd do it again.