Recent reviews by FERN

Game is great and has SO much potential.
TL:DR Game has amazing skill synergies to make insane builds, Fantastic enemy design (not just dumb 'walk towards player' zombies), Bosses that range from just OK to really challenging and fun, a good difficulty scaling option, meta progression, and fun characters who's kits feel very different from each other. Good roguelike overall, 100% try the Early access to see if you like it.

Difficulty Scaling + Enemies:
It difficulty scales not through just buffing the enemies stats, but by introducing more interesting enemies, that spawn in more large numbers, with more dangerous and interactive moves that they throw at the player. Stage 1 enemies just throw slow projectiles or place small pools of acid on the ground, but by stage 4 you might have 3 enemies teleporting behind you to try and score big melee damage on you while other enemies shoot missiles at you that have a large radius. I saw some achievements that talked about a "Veteran" difficulty setting, but I believe the game only currently offers Normal and Hard, which playing on hard will earn you quicker progression at the cost of enemies becoming more aggressive, and having what seems to be ~+10% HP and Speed, as well as ~+50% Damage. I do hope they add multiple difficulties above Hard as I can see the skill tree meta-progression eventually making Hard mode just as easy as Normal mode is when first starting.

Skill Synergies + Looting:
In this game you open different coloured barrels that will give you a choice between 3 options to buff something in that category. For example: Yellow Barrels= Buffs your characters skills, Purple Barrels= Gives you an additional damage type that triggers upon doing X.
I had one run where using 2 dashes in a row always gave me a shield, my AoE abilities were about 10x larger in radius while I had a shield active, and casting one specific ability made it so that ALL my abilities regenerated my dash meter upon hitting, creating an amazing feedback loop. Just in one run I had: okay amount of shielding, massive AoE abilities, and near infinite dashes. All this came from a specific combo of skills that I chose due to them seeming like they would make a good synergistic build.
I have only scratched the surface, the amount of build combos in this game will only get more insane as more characters are added, AND you can influence WHAT you get by HOW you play (which barrels you decide to open).

Skill Tree:
The 'skill tree' that this game advertises is just its form of meta-progression. Play the game, accumulate points, invest in the meta progression for flat stats AND some unique playstyle-buffing perks (such as buffing summoned units, making summoning builds better).
There isnt that much complexity to the skill tree, but it seems like its a way to both add meta-progression (something that i'm not too fond of in general, but can tolerate) and get players 'geared up' for the higher difficulty options the game has.

If the devs make the game a fair amount better by launch, I can see the game being absolutely AMAZING, with potential to be nearly as good as ROR2 in my opinion.

Some notes for the devs: (in order of most important to least in my opinion)
- My game crashed twice in the first 30 minutes of play, after that it never crashed again
- The bosses feel a little too flat, for example the stage 2 manta ray boss looks AMAZING but doesn't do a lot to make the player play around it, make all the bosses move more and reduce enemy spawns heavily during the bossfights to make it feel more like a one on one.
-4 stages doesnt feel like enough, you should give the player some more time to soak in the build they spent the last half-hour crafting, maybe a massive horde stage with all stages of enemies (scaled in HP and damage) followed by a final bossfight or something like that would do the trick.
-additional difficulties past hard feel nearly necessary when making a roguelike with this much metaprogression, the players stats will quickly outpace the Hard enemies (as long as im not missing some info like there's a level cap or something)
-ability sounds often clip into each other, especially when hitting 5+ enemies
- some UI elements dont make intuitive sense such as the text near the bottom of the screen upon earning an upgrade (make it just 2 simple words like "ABILITY UPGRADE" or "AFFLICT UPGRADE" in their respective colors, to make the different chest system more intuitive. example of action and reaction should be: Purple chest --> purple upgrade letters that say "AFFLICT UPGRADE" --> 3 options are afflict focused) and the boss health bar UI (lower number/current HP should be on the left. ex: 761/1000 , not 1000/761)

Hope the full launch goes fantastic, and the game is amazing as I think it'll be after playing it, very glad I stumbled upon it one day :)

This game is very entertaining for anyone seeking a skill based shooter. Althought this games punishes you very hard for mistakes, it also rewards you for getting better at the game and outplaying your opponent. The community is split between toxic and very understanding/nice. Just ignore the toxic players and your experience with this game will be great! Freinds are fun to play with in CS:GO too.