Recent reviews by KliPeH

Every community I've visited over the past few years has been convinced Enter the Gungeon was inadvertently designed to waste its time, or didn't respect its players as much as it perhaps should have. I never felt this way towards EtG myself; I think it's a very well-paced and well-designed game. In fact, it's the epitome of Roguelite game philosophy - one that has not waned in the face of competition for over 8 years on the market now.

The unique presentation of EtG certainly played a big part in its appeal to me. In the pursuit of the gun that can kill the past, players are dropped into a dungeon where everything is gun or bullet-themed; the stages ("chambers") are all plays on gun-related themes or words. The elevators are big bullets, the enemies are shells or cartridges, even the bosses are made of guns or are named after guns, like the Ammoconda or the Dragun.

Currency is dealt in casings, cursed enemies are aptly named "jammed" instead of "damned"; this corny theme reveals a well thought-out universe with a sense of consistency to it, making you want to see more of what it has to offer. The spritework is downright gorgeous, and the game runs well. Significant effort went into making each stage feel like a lively micro-cosmos, as if the players have intruded on the inhabitants' daily lives by simply being there.

Tables are laden with food and drink, getting scattered across the floor as shots whiz by them. Crates, pots, vases, barrels and armor stands outline each room, soaking up projectile damage if taken cover behind, or shattering if bumped into. The walls gradually fill with bullet holes when shot, characters leave dust clouds in their trail, and mayhem left in their wake further takes form in spent bullet casings, spilled liquids, and enemy corpses left on the ground.

This is what sets EtG apart from other games in the genre - the attention to detail. The player and the enemies are not the sole focus of the stage; great effort went into making each firefight feel like it came straight out of a movie. Not all objects and particles are there just for show, though: there is purpose to the braziers, lanterns, liquid drains in each room, indirectly aiding in dealing with your opponents during the fight.

Explosive barrels can be kicked across the floor, then neutralized with a shot or a roll depending on the desired outcome. Levers can be pulled to drop chandeliers or rocks on top of unsuspecting foes. Barrels full of liquid gas or toxic poison can help deny entire areas from enemies if utilized to their fullest extent. There are holes in the floor that foes can be pushed into, or spike, fire, crush traps players must be careful not to trigger.

Tables and coffins can further be used during battle to create temporary cover, or a means to gain invulnerability if slid across. The latter incorporates the dodge-roll mechanic, a neat multi-purpose design that takes after the dash from other games in the genre. Not only does a player gain invulnerability by dodge-rolling, they also neutralize hazards in doing so, and can leap over traps and pits as if they were jumping. On top of that, the roll is able to deal damage.

Enemies then appropriately react to these actions, taking cover behind tables themselves, or shooting where they predict the player will move next. The AI is competent - it telegraphs attacks well, and tries to shoot explosives near players if any are found within their vicinity. Some enemies might feature multiple attack patterns, or explode into revenge-bullets on death, and some can even be used to kill other enemies in stark contrast to other Roguelites.

I would like to point out a flaw within EtG's design, and that is the health scaling used to strengthen the enemies in later game stages. In my eyes, it serves as an unnecessary gear-check, an artificial barrier that stems from the weapons becoming less efficient the longer you play. I'm glad new stages offer new enemies to face off against, however I don't appreciate old enemies gaining more health and resilience to my guns.

That said, the weapon selection aiding in dealing with these foes is so vast, their health often does not matter. Some weapons take after their real-life counterparts, such as the M16 or the AK-47, others are completely imaginary or abstract. As with any other good Roguelite, there are plenty of references to other videogames, and weapons can even synergize with others in your loadout, empowering one if another is picked up.

You'd think that with hundreds of weapons on offer, the selection would get repetitive, but most weapons are surprisingly unique and efficient. Some fire in bursts of varying degrees of accuracy and rates of fire, some are semi-automatic or require charging, others fire in a spread or in a beam configuration. Many interact with the debuff system, causing enemies to burn, freeze, get slowed, poisoned, or even turn into harmless chickens.

More importantly - and this is something I’ve never seen another game do - is their interaction with the reload system. Many weapons will switch phases upon reloading, changing the behavior of the weapon to a more damaging mode with less ammo, or a burst-fire mode, or a different projectile entirely. This makes you adapt to the weapon you’re carrying and gives it a unique personality or quirk.

I believe the main issue players have with this game is the amount of drops initially being very limited, forcing them to fight the first boss with sub-optimal weaponry, making for a very tedious fight. I do also believe over the course of the game’s lifespan the devs actively attempted to address this issue, and as far as I'm concerned, they did so successfully.

Players start with one key for one out of two chests that spawn per level, and during the first floor they further gain enough currency to buy another key or another weapon, with both guaranteed to spawn in the first shop. This can potentially get them rolling (no pun intended) provided luck plays in their favor. There are other means with which players can get weapons, such as discovering secrets or playing minigames.

I personally compensate for this design by playing one of the two characters who sport two starter weapons; all the characters would have been given the same treatment if it were up to me. Switching weapons and using an Active diversifies each engagement and adds to the decision-making aspect of combat. In that, the design of the other characters remains lacking, but provided how easy it is to obtain new weapons I don't give this much significance.

The Actives and Passives are somewhat forgettable, I assume intentionally. They take a back seat to the weapon selection the game puts on offer. Many of the Passives raise max health or improve damage and accuracy, which is pretty boring. Many Actives are about throwing or setting down explosives to temporarily boost damage output. It will mainly be the weapon selection that will draw your interest and provide a reason for you to keep playing.

EtG is a very accessible game, and does many things right that its predecessors do not - for example, teleporting between explored areas, which I believe this game pioneered. Currency magnetizes to you when you finish a room, you can drop, sell, or combine weapons you don't need, and gain health ups by defeating bosses flawlessly. If not for its other strengths, it's also a highly replayable game, thanks to its strong meta-progression system and roster of NPCs.

It's quirky and humorous, I honestly don't see a reason not to recommend this - provided you can stomach the slower-burning runs, and the occasional run-in with bad RNG.

Potion Craft takes place in a magical fantasy land where a single-salary income can support a two-story household, a garden, and a pastime activity on top. During the day you do customer service for the local townsfolk in order to fund research into the alchemy field; in between jobs you tend to your garden, as well as trade ingredients with the local vendors - both of which you must do proactively if you wish to meet the demands of your customers.

The gameplay loop consists of attending to the queue in front of your shop while doing various chores to maintain your stock of plants and minerals. Your objective is to sift through the rambling and smalltalk to figure out what the customer wants, devising an elegant solution to a problem that may or may not have been within your field of expertise to begin with. If this is not the most accurate depiction of customer service out there, I don't know what is.

Jokes aside, figuring out what each customer wants breathes life into the game by giving each a distinct personality, making you feel like you're actually talking to them. Going out back to make a unique item for them ends up being an incredibly satisfying experience, mostly due to the clever implementation of the potion-making system, as well as the UI that helps do so more intuitively - both of which I will go on to describe now.

First, a base solution for the potion is chosen - the map which the player will chart a path through to get to any one desired effect. These effects have a predetermined location, however the map is initially shrouded in fog-of-war, and obstacles block your path - so discovering where the effects are and getting to them, play a big part in making a potion. The marker must travel to the effect and sit on top of it to be applied to that brew.

Getting to these effects is done by adding ingredients to the solution. The ingredients are categorized based on the direction they take you in, and the pinwheel UI can help limit the choice to any one direction. Hovering over an ingredient shows you the path it allows you to travel even before adding it to the mixture. Ingredients are also colored based on their element, and are categorized by type - herbs, shrooms, and minerals.

The idea is to chart a path towards an effect in the most optimal way possible, without hitting obstacles, without wasting materials, and with as much precision as you can. This is because potion strength varies based on how accurate you were in your assessment of the potion marker trajectory. If you were able to fit the potion snugly within the effect's confines, you will make the potion strong, netting you extra pay and reputation with your customer-base.

Part of what makes potion-crafting feel so natural is the act of physically manipulating the tools you have at your disposal. It is possible to add raw ingredients to the concoction, however, if you want to extend the path an ingredient will go, you have to grind it to a fine paste with the mortar and pestle first. You can also add more base solution with the teeming ladle, in order to move the marker closer to the center of the map at no cost.

To make a chosen effect stick, you fan the flame under the cauldron with the bellows, and you mix the concoction inside the cauldron with a mixing spoon to move the marker along its designated path. I do wish there were more tools to manipulate ingredients, perhaps a chopping board or a grater? However the act of physically moving tools to reach your intended goal is what made the gameplay loop so immersive and involved to me.

You can save the potion recipe with all its ingredients in your recipe book, personalized bookmarks and everything. I do wish the customers asked for (or at least appreciated) the effort put into customizing each bottle and writing its labeling, as if you were a pharmacist directing patients on how and when to use medicine. However, that part of potion-making remains optional, despite the personalized label icons and bottle shapes.

Saving recipes is done to prevent tedium and repetition during consecutive play, though you may save a recipe before having an optimal ingredient, forcing you to redo it. Or, you may run out of a saved ingredient completely, having to chart a new path altogether. Still, I appreciate the amount of customization and freedom you are given with the recipe book and the recipes in it, it's certainly a nice optional touch to the game.

The vendor encounters inside the customer queue are what enables you to purchase new ingredients, and are the main source of new ones in the game. The garden eventually becomes unable to support customer demand, and cannot grow the large variety of plants needed for full recipe optimization. This is something the devs intend to address with an update, however the implementation of this garden remains lacking as of writing this review.

One vendor in particular is the source of new recipe book pages, and, more importantly - blueprints for alchemy station parts. If I had to voice a complaint about the game, it'd be that alchemy is made extremely repetitive in the later parts of it - with each rock requiring a combination of multiple specialized potions, and each subsequent rock requiring its predecessor, one you already use to craft the alternative powdered recipe.

If you don't save the recipes for each potion, you quickly find yourself repeating hours of work just to get to the last progression point you've reached. This is because making rocks is the real goal of the game - with the last rock created the game can be considered complete. I also wish there were more uses for these rocks; as it stands, there is one alternative recipe for each rock aiding in potion-crafting, and that’s about it.

Another complaint I'd like to voice is the way the reputation system interacts with your customers during the day. You see, the more people you help, the more customers you receive per day - which actually doesn't matter, since the passage of time has no bearing on your resources or character. However, customer demands are split into good and bad asks, and helping each customer nets you either virtue or infamy, never both.

If you have lots of virtue, you attract customers with good intentions - those that ask for health, courage, growth and improvement - and vice versa - with infamy, those looking to hurt, sow fear, steal, or manipulate. I can appreciate the variety of asks put on offer here, but helping all people will eventually only attract one type, and you may end up in a situation where you only help good or bad-intent customers, without the variety the earlygame offers.

Before I wrap up, I want to mention how much I appreciate the game's presentation, namely its use of vibrant colors and whimsical depictions of plants and stars. It's very endearing, and gives the game this fairy tale look that's been done extremely well on the artist's part. The sound played as you pick up each ingredient and grind it to a paste, then throw it into the cauldron, is also very calming and soothing for this type of game, almost ASMR-tier.

To me, Potion Craft is the ideal busywork title, including just the right amount of interactivity I'd have wanted to see from my simulator. Each task has an involved process of steps: evaluate the board, select the right ingredients, grind them to the right degree, throw them into the cauldron, mix everything and bottle it, then finally serve it to yet another satisfied customer.

There's a real sense of progression with each saved recipe, each earned sack of coins, each spread rumor about the little shop you've opened to advance humanity's knowledge of the occult. It is also open-ended, meaning there’s room for the devs to add more content after the final rock has been created. I genuinely have high hopes for this game, that it will continue to improve and be built upon with each consequent update.

Ironcast is a game that needs to be approached with a very specific mindset. You must accept things will often be outside of your control, and skill alone will not always constitute a win. It’s a core tenet of stoic philosophy - you're at the whim of random number generation deciding whether or not you get to act this turn at all. If you can accept that, you'll come to know Ironcast as the best Match-3 game on the market that is not yet another dating sim or smut.

The premise of Ironcast is simple: complete as many objectives as possible in preparation for the big boss fight. The objectives don't necessarily involve combat, or killing your opponent. Some involve diplomacy - as in, choosing the right dialogue options - others are about preserving gear to use as your own, or collecting specific gems, or surviving an enemy attack.

The gem board is naturally where most of the action happens. Combat and movement involve collecting resources within a 3-turn span before the enemy gets to play their own. There is an exception to this rule: getting an extra turn after defeating an enemy, when fighting multiple ones. The board is bezeled in fashionable Victorian-esque decorations, and the Steampunk mechs are placed opposite of eachother waiting to act their moves out accordingly.

Ammo gems (purple) let you fire your weapons, two of which can be carried at a time. The weapons should preferably serve two different purposes, i.e. one to take down shields, another to damage exposed enemy subsystems. The weapon variety is fairly poor, however the types that do exist get the job done. It is often better to soften up a shielded target with a laser or a missile, then pepper it with machine gun fire or flak.

The weapon tiers vary solely based on stats, and scale linearly as the game progresses. This means you cannot get worse weapons than the tier you've last obtained, but also can’t get better ones, or sell ones you don't need. The ammunition type also does not correlate to the kind of damage it can do - energy weapons are not especially effective against shields, and projectile weapons are not especially useful against hull, like FTL led you to believe.

Energy gems (orange) power your defensive countermeasures. By default, Ironcast need to be fueled or powered each turn to keep them moving or shielded. There are 3 tiers to each measure, giving exponentially better evasion or damage reduction. Shields are surprisingly capable, however in the lategame it is usually better to spec into evasion, as it has a chance to completely negate damage rather than soften it.

Repair gems (green) allow repairs of specific subsystems, which is a nice segue into talking about how health works. Each Ironcast has its drive, its shield, and its two weapon modules. Each part can be targeted to deactivate its accompanying function, as well as damage the overall HP of the mech. Once overall HP reaches 0, the mech dies. Other than two abilities, there is no active healing in the game, it has to be done in the hangar between each op.

Therein lies the biggest source of player agency in the game - choosing what systems to target on enemy mechs, or repair on their own. It's also where it’s most evident the AI cheats - it will be able to repair damaged systems no matter what, and then activate them immediately, sometimes leading to a stalemate; that said, if you manage to get the AI to repair, it will likely not attack (to simulate a limited resource board), and so the cheating is not blatantly obvious.

Coolant gems (blue) allow to use other resources and modules, as each action (bar repairs) consumes coolant in addition to its main gem. Running out of coolant means your Ironcast will be overheating, and taking incremental damage to its systems and hull. You might have enough ammo or energy to power up, but can you afford the cooling? It's a nice additional layer of resource management and decision-making to top the basic system play off.

To account for the restriction, the coolant pool is the largest for each Ironcast, and there are plenty of means to regain coolant that aren’t collecting the resource from the board. This allows for certain flexibility while balancing the ammo and energy systems so that players have to choose between playing defensively or offensively against different types of opponents.

Finally, scrap gems (yellow) do not have an immediate effect on the battlefield, but serve as looted currency that allows to potentially purchase new gear. It’s also used to repair the mech in the hangar, or improve resource quotas. The implementation of the currency system is restrictive, probably for balancing reasons; without collecting scrap, you will not be able to purchase a single weapon, or worse, be forced to spend all money on repairs without progress.

There are also unique gems that do not belong to any one pool. Overload gems (white) empower your next action, like firing an extra shot from a weapon, or gaining extra evasion from activating the drive. Without those, systems have a default overload chance of 5%. They can also act as a bridge between two nodes of the same resource. Link gems allow to create multi-colored chains, and are where most turn efficiency and optimization comes from.

You can attempt to keep Link or Overload nodes to prepare for a big chain, however those take precious space away from more useful resources, and so another aspect of decision-making is introduced into the game. Should you keep the gems for later, or clear the board now to make space? Moments where you get to make these decisions are where the game truly shines.

The AI you fight is well-balanced, in the sense it lets you play the game instead of immediately obliterating you. It is given leniency so that it doesn’t target each subsystem until it is destroyed, like the player is likely to do. It manages to spread damage evenly among subsystems and gives you a fighting chance as you are not immediately immobilized or de-shielded, then annihilated without a way out of the situation.

Another source of player agency comes from Ironcast abilities. The abilities are the safety net of the player from losing runs to RNG, which is what makes the AI "cheating" acceptable. Using them does not cost a turn or resources, and is where skill and game knowledge come into play - as choosing the right Passives and Actives are crucial for reaching the endgame.

The Passives range from less resource consumption, to better damage or gun accuracy, to an increased chance of certain gems appearing. Frankly, some effects are marginal, but they still grant tangible means with which to progress your gear. Actives make or break runs, and getting one ability can change the tide of battle. Since the AI cannot use skills or abilities, its mechs get much more health, and stronger weaponry, eventually rivaling those of bosses.

Each player Ironcast starts with one unique Active, and can gain more upon leveling up. These abilities can change gems to other gems, collect all type of gem on the board, or siphon resources from the enemy cargo hold. The most useful abilities are often ones that enable you to fire an extra shot at no cost, or to ignore shields, or to have shots not miss for a turn.

They're a contributing factor to the replayability of the game, otherwise weakened by the same missions appearing in every run, a limited selection of mechs, and limited guns to use against them. Admittedly, a disappointing amount of content for a Roguelite, however a completionist would certainly get their money’s worth.

Not many games embrace RNG the way Ironcast does, giving you just enough control over the battlefield to make the experience tolerable. RNG can work in your favor, or in favor of the AI, it's truly one chaotic ordeal - where a 5% chance to overload can decide whether an hour-long run lives or dies. An enjoyable one at that, too, provided you embrace the consequences.

Ultimately, I don't feel Vagante managed to live up to my expectations, or realize its full potential as a Roguelite. It seems to me it was primarily designed with multiplayer in mind, an experience in which most of my complaints would be voided. It is only when you extensively play the singleplayer that you begin to notice the issues with the combat, dull aesthetic, general lack of character, and tedium that restarting becomes after each death to an instakill.

The tutorial, and by this extent the default Knight class, serve as early warning signs to how restrictive combat in this game is. First and foremost, your only attack for the duration of the game locks you in place as you swing your weapon; you cannot turn around, dodge, or block in order to cancel an attack you have committed to. You can jump to get around the restriction, however the decision to lock you in place tells me this was intended design, and getting around it would be akin to exploiting a glitch.

This means that whenever enemies come up to attack you, you end up trading damage with them instead of swiftly felling them. This is exacerbated by the short reach of the default Knight weapon, the sword, and only gets worse as you unlock more characters, who employ daggers, or fight only using their bare fists. This puts you well within reach of most enemy attacks, attacks you have but a brief moment to react to.

This is not an issue in multiplayer, where one player acts as a diversion, then the rest get to attack freely. In singleplayer, staying in place for the extra second can seal your fate, resulting in constantly having to bob and weave between swings to survive. This prolongs each encounter to the point of being a nuisance. Losing patience inevitably leads to a slow demise as you try skip the content you’ve seen dozens of times before just to get to "the fun part".

There are very few means with which to heal your character, the main method being sitting at the campfire at the end of each stage. The second best method is drinking unknown potions in hopes of finding a regeneration one, potions that may very well be poisonous. You can burn books and scrolls for marginal healing that doesn't scale with enemy damage at all. Then there’s cooking monsters and rescuing fairies, which - apart from a couple death tips - the game never discloses you can do. Those also heal for negligible amounts.

One would have hoped it is specifically the characters' mobility that would have allowed them to outmaneuver the AI; however engagements are only allowed horizontally, no moves initially to tackle threats from above or below - despite the game constantly asking you to scale platforms vertically. This makes combat incredibly awkward, as you attempt to drop down or jump next to an enemy to attack, only to bump into their collision box and get hit.

At this point you wonder why there are no alternative means with which to address threats not directly adjacent to you. Leveling up for the first time quickly answers that question - you are able to engage enemies vertically, provided you spec into the right character abilities. Thus the journey to make the game comfortable to play, and your character flexible enough to deal with most situations the game throws at them, begins.

Upon leveling up, Knight receives a downward stab, an overhead attack, and a block to negate damage. Rogue levels up to move while drawing arrows, which otherwise forces players to remain static just like melee does. They also get a dodgeroll and a walljump, while Wildling gets combos, a midair dash, and a stomp, and Houndmasters gets a charge-up attack.

These effects are all rooted in separate abilities, ones you need to spec into upon every level up to obtain. With only one level up per stage (assuming you kill the boss), it takes nearly half the game to grant the characters their utmost basic utilitarian abilities. However, level up points can also be spent on stats to improve raw damage, firerate, health, or evasion, so unlocking those abilities puts you behind on a stat curve you could have otherwise achieved.

Equipment you find during the run further gives an illusion of choice, making you think you might be able to stray from the preset equipment your class gets. However, each class has a weapon affinity, and using any other weapon is detrimental to them. Knight can only use their extended moveset with swords, Wildling can only use combos with unarmed weapons, and Rogue and Houndmaster can only deal extra damage with daggers and clubs respectively.

Considering each weapon only has one attack, deals damage in the single digits, and has extremely short reach, those boons become hard to pass up. No weapon can deal more than 9 damage on its own, and with enemies that have dozens of hit points, rather than progressively getting better gear and trying it out, you're incentivized to use the type your class has an affinity to - making for a very dull and repetitive gameplay loop.

I would also like to point out that, despite Knight getting a bow during the tutorial, during normal play bows are nearly impossible to come by. Arrows for them are scarce, as vendors never sell them. You're expected to farm them off enemies in a particular area. They do minimal damage for any class that isn't Rogue anyway, and no character other than Rogue can fire while moving, so you are again disincentivized from any experimentation with ranged play.

The game is split into four areas, the fifth one reserved for the final boss fight. Each area has three stages, each stage contains its own enemies and bosses. The bosses appear in random order, however each game will see to you killing all bosses and enemies, and consequent runs never change this. You can choose an alt path that adds another stage to each area and is significantly harder, however the reward is not worth the health and effort you put into it.

There's at least one instakill factor in each stage, be it spikes, boulder traps, an abyss, or certain enemy attacks. Bosses are given insane amounts of HP relative to the amount of damage you are able to do. Again, weapons on their own deal 1-7 damage, with character stats and gear further improving damage by small margins - culminating at about 12 damage per attack. Bosses then get hundreds of hit points, and attacks that stun, spawn other enemies, melee for a third of your own HP bar, or outright kill you instantly.

As a result, the difficulty curve feels artificial. You are rarely given means with which to heal your character, then are made to face enemies spongey to damage. You can instantly lose to multiple sources of instakill damage, while the bosses themselves get away with it. The global XP bar maxes out after 6-8 hours of play, and unlocks character backgrounds, most of which are insignificant, or are outright detrimental to them.

The only positive interactions I had with the game were while playing with friends and drinking, neither of which is a good metric to judge a game by. Any game will be fun with friends, however one can only be "good" if it is sufficiently mechanically complex and polished. Vagante has a lot of potential, however the meat and potatoes of any dungeon slasher - the combat - disappoints greatly. I did enjoy collecting loot and moving it around my inventory, as well as cooking monsters, however these do not represent the game in its entirety.

The characters, enemies, bosses, vendors, even the color palette and sprite design, simply do not have the charm to be the saving grace of the game as is usually the case with other mediocre titles. The meta-progression doesn't unlock anything of worth, and doesn't keep you entertained for long. The difficulty is outright unfair, and considering the lack of variety in your engagement options, you are not given much of a reason to replay once the game is over.

I cannot in good faith recommend this.

I have been obsessed with SoP for the better part of a month, seeing it to 100% completion despite working full time and having to maintain my household. To me, this is a testament to how much the game grew on me and how much I enjoyed it. However, my first impression of it was not a very good one, an impression I want to go over as I describe various aspects of the game. This is to assure players with similar concerns it is indeed worth their time and effort.

First, SoP does not play in a proper widescreen resolution, and I was concerned it could make navigating the confined playspace difficult - what with its bulky enemy and projectile designs. Enemies don’t look like they follow any set artistic direction or even belong in a Shmup to begin with. Killing them is made a priority over exploring the level, interacting with objects, managing resources like in other Roguelites. The stages look nearly identical, and don't contain any interactable objects or ornaments to help immerse players into them.

Characters are equipped with a dash that is able to accelerate them in a direction slightly but not grant any I-Frames. At first, this decision is perplexing - what use is a dash if it doesn't provide invulnerability? In time, it becomes clear the dash is but a simple repositioning tool, and players are expected to address bullet patterns by bobbing and weaving through them. Movement has no momentum to it, a choice typical to GameMaker games; however, a good player learns to appreciate the precision in this design, quickly becoming a non-issue.

What truly made SoP stand out in my eyes was the unique roster of monsters and characters it has put on offer. Their distinct colors and shape help set them apart in the heat of battle, despite the odd proportions. They fire consistently, and might feature multiple phases and behaviors; later variants become stronger, with this change not rooted in instakill damage or inflated health, but rather in increasingly complex attack patterns and movement. It's a nice change of pace from the artificial difficulty other games in the genre tend to boast.

Enemies associate with a specific race that plays a part in choosing weapons with which to kill them - a point I will return to shortly. Visual feedback for killing them is great - currency spills out of them in all directions, to be collected and used for the players' gain. With up to three boss alternatives to each area, repeating stages is not made a nuisance. Even before a boss fight players are tasked with killing multiple minibosses to proceed, a challenge that not only guarantees loot, but also contrasts nicely with the "cannon fodder" fought until then.

The weapon arsenal in the game is easily my favorite aspect of it. I will go out on a limb and say the starter weapon feels weak in comparison; it deals negligible damage, shoots in a straight line, and cannot be upgraded to change its functionality like other non-starter guns. This impression can be somewhat subverted by indulging with the 'Peashooter' challenge - beating the game without ever picking up new guns - however this only serves as a bragging right, and doesn't unlock anything but a single Steam achievement.

Basic's flawed implementation is exacerbated by the players' limited carry capacity. They can only use one weapon at a time, and once it runs out of ammo it breaks permanently; it's an irritating setback - most games offer at least one other engagement option to spice combat up. That said, the game does its best to ensure players don't lose their custom gun, and most floors guarantee a Trove that spawns multiple ones, or alternative means with which to obtain weapons, such as Arcade Machines, Shortcuts, Secret Rooms and Vaults.

Because conserving ammo is vital, the game offers two types of ammo pickups for players to find, with three tiers of effectiveness to each one. The first raises max ammo capacity for all weapons, the second replenishes ammo within said cap. If players are full on ammo, the latter will also raise the ammo cap slightly - neat dual-purpose design that rewards players for collecting an abundance of resources, that way they don't feel they've missed out on loot.

Most weapons have unique quirks that help set them apart from others. Railgun has to charge up before use; Thunderhead deals damage as it travels through the air; Spear gets stuck in enemies and deals damage over time; Drill goes through walls and drags enemies along; Revolver can be fired rapidly but has to reload between bursts; Razor pierces enemies but takes a while to return to you; Laser hits targets instantly with a slight delay; and more.

You can attach up to five weapon mods to each gun, drastically changing its functionality. For example, a weapon can be turned into a laser or a shotgun, or fired more rapidly at the expense of damage. Projectiles can be introduced homing, ricocheting, piercing attributes. Moreover, the game has rare variants with inherent mods not found anywhere else, called "Uniques". Those cannot be altered further, and are considered to be the more specialized and powerful variant of the base gun - often as references to other forms of media.

More importantly, the system allows a weapon to be especially effective against a specific race of creatures, dealing more damage and "exorcising" it upon death. Exorcism is crucial in the lategame - it will kill enemies that spawn other enemies without them doing so, as well as remove Revenge Bullets shot at players in retaliation. I really like this mechanic, but players who don't can safely turn the feature off from the Hub and make space for other Keywords.

Much like ammo, health ties into a system designed from the ground up to reward players for collecting an excess of resources. The HP bar consists of Hearts, an amount corresponding to chosen player Lethality (a stat modifier of sorts). It has a secondary bar made of Parts, four of which can be used to heal, upgrade max health, or gain a shield. Those are obtained as regular drops during the game, or when player health goes beyond its max value - healing at Shops or Arcade Machines, or replacing weapons with other weapons.

This reinforces the Debris system, currency used to purchase items, upgrades, and weapons during the playthrough. Since currency is the lifeblood of a run, it is gained by killing enemies, but also by reaching stat thresholds, such as max health or bomb capacity, or cashing in unused ammo. Bombs are another resource made available to players, with its primary use being clearing on-screen projectiles, and secondary being opening Shortcuts between rooms. Bombs also regenerate every few rooms, allowing players lenient bomb use.

Score at the end of a run is not used to place players on a leaderboard, but is rather spent at the Hub to unlock permanent upgrades, weapons, mods, bombs, characters, modes of play, and even physical upgrades to the Hub world itself. Game length is also a part of the meta-progression; beating the final boss initially ends the run prematurely, and players must find means with which to advance the game through consequent runs. New floors are then unlocked permanently, without having to repeat the process again.

SoP is far from perfect, however I learned to appreciate its intricacies with time. I understand it was meticulously crafted to be as fair and balanced as possible, even if I don't agree with some decisions, like opening chests with ammo, or destroying loot when exiting a room. Players have become too accepting of cheap dev practices to the likes of instakill damage, inflated health numbers, or incompetent AI, making me skeptical of purchasing "Overwhelmingly Positive" titles; that said, after having completed SoP, I can safely say it really is as good as people say.

I commend 11-Bit Studios for making an attempt to portray the tragedy and uncertainty of war from the perspective of an ordinary civilian. You are not sent down into the trenches, nor tasked with sweeping corridors in search of enemy combatants; you hunt rats for food, collect rainwater, barter for items, dismantle furniture to survive winter. I like games that are down to earth and feature a believable storyline with matching gameplay mechanics to accompany it.⁣

Reading the game is now exhibited in schools and museums, I get the impression the message behind it takes precedence over the way it plays in the eyes of the average consumer. I understand This War of Mine helped raise money for both charities and, more recently, Ukraine's war efforts; however, real world politics continue to skew the players' perception of it. My review will point out its subpar designs without dwelling on the devs' political agendas.

Your characters spawn into one of two (non-DLC) shelters, the difference between which is purely cosmetic. This means you will constantly stare at, and to some extent customize, the same screen in every run you play. During the day you clear rubble, build workstations, barricade entrances, play music, listen to the news, rest, heal, feed, talk to other characters depending on their status. Every two in-game days neighbors and traders arrive at your doorstep, making the same propositions in the same order throughout each playthrough.

Other modes of play ("Stories") change the starting group composition, but not any of the above. This makes the experience repetitive. You cannot converse or gossip with neighbors the way you'd expect to do during wartime. You cannot interact with people you meet in raids, nor negotiate with those breaking into your home to steal resources during the night. If you elect to fast forward the day in order to get to this night section, which is the "gamey" part (explained shortly), you skip the event without notice - a significant blow to your reserves.

If you raid place X with its predefined loot, you will be able to build station Y, then Z later to ensure otherwise unobtainable victory. The gameplay thus becomes about memorizing what resource quota you need to meet in order to build which mandatory workstation first. You will not survive without a heater, gas stove, rainwater collector, two workshops, and either a herb garden or a rat trap. This is very formulaic and does not vary between the runs. There is little incentive to engage with other optional workstations, i.e. ones for making alcohol or tobacco.

The characters' expressions feel forced and unnatural, their photorealistic polaroid looks out of place considering the textbook-scribble aesthetic of the game. Their past is summarized in a single paragraph under some menu, making it hard to care about them. Neither characters nor locations are randomly generated, again hurting the replayability of the game. Losing a character can doom your party, since nobody else can carry as much, or fight, cook, heal just as well. Replacing them takes so long you're better off restarting the entire 9-hour run.

Barricading the shelter is a linear process, nothing that requires constant maintenance or upkeep. Clearing rubble is done on Day 1, and the day you finally get a hatchet to destroy the furniture littered around the house. There is no decision-making involved in doing this; none of the preexisting objects can be interacted with, they only exist to get in the way of your building. The build marker is freeform, but objects can only be placed on a hidden grid and at a certain distance from one another, and can't be moved after being placed down.

At night, you can send a person in to raid points of interest while the rest sleep or guard the shelter. For some inexplicable reason you're not allowed to scavenge during the day, which would have saved you trouble obtaining resources, as well as skipped downtime waiting for people to heal, bars to progress etc. It's also beyond me why you cannot send multiple people to scavenge for bigger hauls and better security; after all, the AI raiders are able to do so.

I don't know if the game was ever designed with PC players in mind, but the controls for it are absolutely dreadful. There are no keyboard shortcuts for anything - you cannot open menus, rotate through characters, control them, or choose their equipment using the keyboard. LMB, RMB and MMB all scroll the screen, with LMB making characters sneak, and double-clicking (or RMB / MMB) making them strafe, the latter randomly not working at times.

There are no keys to change between combat / scavenge stances. There is no setting to tell characters to get to places by any means necessary; they will simply stop in place if there's an obstacle in the way. It's not always clear which elements of the level are part of the background and which are tangible means to reach certain areas, let alone which path the AI will ultimately decide to take. You have to drag it by the nose to where you want it to go, otherwise it sprints through hallways meant to be snuck through and into the field of view of enemies.

Damage and health values are never made clear to the player, making stealth takedowns and melee unreliable. Enemies cannot be incapacitated, you either kill them or they kill you. After a takedown inevitably fails, you then cannot push through them to escape. You cannot back out of the situation either, as the entire stage is alerted to your presence. This is what usually kills your character; you're expected to flawlessly sneak through dangerous levels the game pushes you to explore in the lategame with faulty AI and awful character controls.

There are a slew of other bizarre design choices that make me question the devs' thought process making this. The gas stove cannot be upgraded or used to boil water if there's food on it. This food has to be eaten, it cannot be moved. Water is only used for crafting or barter, the characters never need to drink it. Characters cannot queue up to do the same action, and they cannot assist others in building and deconstruction. They often say nonsensical things, for example that they have tools to perform an action they don’t really have.

Not a single item - two-by-four, rock, pipe, rebar, metal rod - can be used as a weapon, beside a knife, or a specially-crafted crowbar and shovel. The knife requires an entire metal workshop as well as four weapon parts to craft. Characters return to the shelter depressed if they are forced to kill, but the mechanic quickly loses its merit as you set another character to talk to them or play music for 8 consecutive hours until the moodle disappears; no long-lasting effects that interfere with executive function and warrant a change in playstyle.

None of the characters can figure out how to temporarily barricade the front door for the night. They're apparently all certified electricians, carpenters, engineers; they can all lockpick doors, make the same stations, items, and products regardless of traits. However, they cannot move a single chair to make space for building without disassembling it. The passage of in-game time doesn't make any thematic sense; why does it take 20 minutes to descend a flight of stairs, and winter last only 10 days?

Every facet of this game is poorly thought out and implemented. Solutions to most problems are oddly specific and limited. There is little variety to the things you build, food you eat, resources you collect, and weapons you use. How can this be the purported "emotional experience" when everything is so clunky? A boring, buggy experience, hardly offering the expected gameplay and replayability value for a $20 title - with four DLCs revolving around the same dull stories and mechanics. This would have fared much better as a comic book or show.

Playing Delver today is akin to playing Rogue, the forefather of the Roguelike and Roguelite genres, in 2023; what made these games conceptually or technologically advance back then does not hold up to today's modern gaming standards. If players back then were satisfied with using weapons that are functionally identical to one another, in a combat system that revolves around moving forwards and backwards ever so slightly, against the same type of AI in different hats and costumes - then today it is simply not enough.

This would have been unfair to say about a game from 2012, had the latest update to it not been made recently. Since it was made recently, and the FAQ claims Delver is complete, I find it unacceptable it is being left in this state after 10 years of active development. Again, my complaints mostly stem from the game's lacking combat; everything else could've been excused had the combat been even remotely engaging. However, the lack of enemy variety, and items to tackle them early on, certainly do not help Delver's case here.

Weapons in your possession can be swung as they are, or charged up for a Heavy attack, with both moves carried out excruciatingly slowly for no apparent reason. The off-hand slot fits an illumination item or a shield, with both not being interactable in any meaningful way whatsoever. Objects lying around the stage (aptly named "Trash" on the Wiki) can be picked up and thrown to deal damage, however doing so requires switching to a different hotbar slot, since items cannot be thrown from your off-hand for some inexplicable reason.

This requires you to constantly stop and interact with the inventory system to make space for said throwables; these items also need to be charged up before use, leaving you defenseless against most existing opponents. They deal minimal damage anyway, making picking up and throwing items a sub-optimal strategy to deal with the dungeon's inhabitants. This could have otherwise been a great way to mix-and-match melee / ranged moves to break Delver's monotonous combat, alas it was not meant to be.

There are no alternate mechanics to make interacting with the game world interesting. No stealth, skills, Passives or Actives, pets, crafting, selling or recycling gear; no rolling, blocking, parrying, dodging, strafing, crouching through crevices to avoid damage. Even jumping, the most basic of game mechanics, was only available through an external mod for the majority of the game's lifespan, and once shipped with base game it came unbound from a key by default.

I'd wager most players don't even realize you can jump in Delver to begin with, which does become crucial in the later parts of this game. Most Roguelites compensate for such simplistic design by providing a larger variety of items for players to use at their leisure, however Delver doesn't bother. There's a dagger, two maces, two polearms, and three sword variants. The Ranged category has 4 identical bows and about 7 wands on offer.

These are meant to be used in tandem with melee weapons, however they too require charging, and either wear down or have a limited amount of uses. If you thought you could utilize them from your off-hand slot like in, say, Dishonored, you'd be wrong. No distinction is made between piercing, slashing, blunt damage. The weapons animate differently, but only differ from one another through minor stat changes. Melee weapons also progressively wear down, requiring you to carry copies of the same weapon for when it inevitably breaks.

Each of the four areas features 2-3 "grunt" AI-types based solely on close-ranged combat. Since you outreach them even with the broken starter dagger, none of them ever pose a real threat to you. They usually fall prey to their own horrible pathfinding anyway, even without player intervention, getting stuck in canals, under platforms, ladders, etc. There's one ranged AI type, and one that lunges at you from a distance in order to attack, arguably the most interesting and challenging one. Multiple areas then reuse that AI and those enemies.

Considering this lack of variety in both enemies and weapons, there should then be no good reason each run takes nearly 2 hours to complete. Each area has two stages, and there is an additional intermission stage between those - so either one stage per area needs to go, or all intermission stages altogether. Once you reach the last stage and beat the boss, you are required to go through the entire game in reverse to make your escape, which feels like a chore at that point, as if the devs are padding for your playtime.

I find it ironic that completing the game increases its difficulty, as if there's any incentive to replay it. The only form of meta-progression in Delver is account balance, which allows you to purchase starting gear for new runs - gear you'd find in the first few rooms of a dungeon either way. Inventory size is deliberately limited on new saves, progressively getting bigger the more bag upgrades you purchase or find. No new items, perks, stages, characters, NPCs, or monsters are unlocked, which is highly disappointing to say the least.

There are other quirks and inconsistencies that make the game feel incomplete. Enemies get stuck inside walls, hitboxes don't match their sprite, weird lighting and geometry, stuttering and hitching despite the game running on a modern system, water extinguishing bombs and burning entities but not lit candles, movement made possible with the inventory screen open but not the map UI, spritework making it hard to gauge whether you can hit an enemy or not, seeing and going through map bounds, etc.

The only thing that helped me see Delver to its conclusion is its moddability. The speed at which your character swings their weapon is truly dreadful; I would have not been able to continue playing without the Faster Weapons mod. I have also installed Weapon Expansion Pack to alleviate the aforementioned lack in weapon variety. More Chunks helps with seeing the same room patterns across consequent runs, and there's a mod to address game length called Little Delver that might be worth looking into.

Delver is not a bad game, it is a foundation which a proper Roguelite can be built upon. Unfortunately, instead of being introduced more content, as well as mechanics like strafing or blocking projectiles / bashing with your off-hand, the devs elected to abandon it. It is amateurish; it used to cost $5 when it was still an Android game - now the $15 asking price for it is, quite frankly, ridiculous considering you get to see all content in a single 2-hour playthrough. I'd advise you spend your hard-earned money elsewhere.

It became apparent to me rather quickly I was not part of the intended target demographic for this game. My enjoyment of playing videogames stems from the empowerment of my characters; whether it is done through items or abilities across dozens or hundreds of hours of play does not matter to me, as long as it does happen. In my mind, the more approaches there are to a problem, e.g. the more weapons, characters, passives and actives - the more interactive, flexible, and thus enjoyable any one game becomes.

That's not to say I don’t enjoy the occasional platformer, however Rain World is far from a typical one. The challenge in Rain World stems from a unique ecosystem of creatures and fauna, each boasting its own unique traits, lairs, evolutionary steps, hidden motives and fears. This is easily the most interesting aspect of the game - the fact that it revolves around living beings to interact with and discover, adding to the potential complexity of its mechanics.

This is something that needs to be addressed properly in order for it to work, namely through an effective means of dealing with creatures as well as a good incentive to do so. Rain World does neither; it fails to give you the tools or motivation to survive, or anything meaningful in return for surviving at all. Enemies merely serve as an obstacle on your way to the next cutscene, and you gain nothing by neutralizing them. Navigating the stages doesn't get any harder or easier as you gain no new means to tackle neither earlier nor later stages.

Playing thus becomes an unrewarding, if not an outright frustrating game experience. You have two engagement options, and both suck equally. You can throw rocks that deal zero damage, or spears that get stuck in creatures and permanently in terrain if you miss. They can only be thrown horizontally, while enemies can climb background elements or fly to approach you from all directions. Enemies are faster and kill you instantly, on top of having measures against these tools anyway, i.e. a hardened skull or a heightened HP bar.

You evolved as a biped, with limbs that can grab and hold onto man-made objects used for hunting. This alone could have laid the foundation for a combat system that lets you utilize weapons in order to compensate for the feline claws and teeth you're missing. You are further able to trade with a faction of primate-like beings, so at least trading for these tools should have been made an option. As it stands, there are no weapons to make you stronger, no abilities to make you quicker, no upgrades to make fighting enemies trivial.

Rain World’s self-described "survival" element further disappoints with the way you feed and rest. You can’t eat other predators unless you’re on Hardmode. Your only source of food - bugs and fruit - spawns in clusters of 2-8 every few screens, and respawns within 2-3 "days", each equating to one point of hunger out of the four you need to fill daily. There are no added bonuses to eating different types of food, so what you eat doesn't matter. You can thus move between two food sources indefinitely, with almost zero risk involved.

You are further encouraged to do so by vague bars advancing on the intermission screen, which are, at that point in the game, your only pointer to the game's objective. However, merely "surviving" this way goes on to complete one of 10 quests present in the game, and has nothing to do with its completion. There is indeed somewhere you need to be and certain things you need to do, but you don't know this, and likely never will unless you look it up. Completing the quests grants teleportation tokens out of difficult areas and nothing more.

Your companion Iggy is partly to blame for this confusion. If you don't move towards Iggy's suggested destination, it will feel "ignored" and give you less and less directions until it stops interacting with you altogether. At some point it may "think" you don’t "like" it, and start physically spawning further away, off-screen, where you can no longer see the advice to follow it. Worse yet, if you fumble with the controls and end up narrowly missing or killing it, at any point during the 40-hour play experience, it will never give you directions again.

This absolutely cripples the player without them even realizing it, as it is the only internal mechanic that points you towards your destination. Iggy's "hand-holding" mechanic (it is actually called that in the code) tries to point you towards food, shelter, or goal depending on a list of priorities set by another vague algorithm. This algorithm never actually manages to guess what you need at the moment, making Iggy feel pretty much useless from the get go.

The real objective of the game turns out to be hibernating enough times to pass through Karma Gates, reaching specific story regions. You figure this out by keeping to one direction and stumbling upon one such Gate, with newfound understanding of the cryptic symbols on the intermission screen. There are 12 regions gated by Karma Gates, with only 3(!) of them pertaining to the actual story. The rest serve as filler; guessing where to go is left up to the player, as the only text or UI in the game are reserved for the controls manual.

Story regions have to be entered in a specific order, which is not something you're ever told. If you enter the wrong region, i.e. attempt to enter the endgame without proper knowledge or skill, you seriously screw yourself over to a point where you might need to restart the whole game. You might then reluctantly turn to external sources to see where you actually need to go, which is what I would consider bad game design.

The earlygame regions are absolutely dreadful. Three of the five are almost entirely submerged in water, which is clunky to move through, has invincible enemies, and poses a significant threat due to the miniscule (hidden) oxygen bar your Slugcat possesses. Another is shrouded in complete darkness, with deadly creatures roaming inside. You have to either give up all item space in order to carry a bioluminescent creature, or navigate blindly using the map, which loads slowly and requires you to stand still in order to use it.

"Surely then, if you can’t fight well, you get to be really good at running away?" No. Despite this being a platformer, your character constantly gets slowed down by each bump and slope in the terrain, stumbling and changing stances over every crack and raised mound of dirt. Hostile creatures also constantly bug out because of this, contorting and coiling in on themselves, becoming unapproachable. These creature spawns are RNG-based, meaning your "death-pits" and "instakill spikes" spawn some times, other times not at all, and always behave erratically.

Even the game's own aesthetic goes against it at some point, when jagged and rocky platform overlays make it impossible to guess how long a platform is, foreground looks like physical platforms and makes you miss jumps, inaccessible tunnels look identical to accessible ones. There's little to no ambient music in the game, with it instead being used to signify a threat somewhere around the level. There's no closed-captioning; the hard-of-hearing will be put at a disadvantage, as well as players who simply want to play with their own music in the BG.

Rain World does everything within its power to discourage players from fighting, actively punishing for killing monsters to emphasize they're at the bottom of the food chain. Walking around looking at scenery is the only source of player agency. It doesn't feel rewarding, it doesn't motivate to do better. When the reward is some still image and a vague piece of storytelling, why bother? What a waste, to create such a beautiful environment, such a vast alien world, only to have players run away from it at the slightest hint of danger.

Hyperspace Dogfights has to be one of the most enjoyably addictive, brilliantly crafted passion projects I've ever had the pleasure of recommending. It is moderately complex, brims with style and flair, and offers a vast selection of ships, weapons, items, and enemies to test your mettle against. In this review I will explain what made this game quickly one of my favorites, as well as why it feels so unique compared to other games in this genre.

HDog is an objective-oriented Shmup, meaning you fly around doing things other than simply shooting planes down. Your craft utilizes a four-directional booster system that allows you to hover in the air, then immediately bank left or right, or thrust yourself backwards at will. Mouse aim (which I highly encourage players to use) then acts as the craft’s rudder and elevators, helping it precisely point in a direction even while stalling.

This movement system enables you to shoot at enemies while remaining completely still, or to fly parallel to the ground as you engage them - in stark contrast to games like LUFTRAUSERS, where you briefly stall, point the aircraft at the enemy, then point away in order to make your escape. This sets a high skill ceiling for players to reach, but in turn makes capturing objectives, chasing after opponents, and avoiding damage trivial.

Weapons are made to be inaccurate while boosting, further encouraging the use of reverse and side-thrusters to line yourself up with a target. The shift is shown on the digital aim module, changing depending on the craft's state of motion. The rest of the UI is just as intuitive; the Shield is a rhombus that gets narrower with each hit, targeting warnings are shown around the jet, calibrated at the start of each run and rebooted if you suffer EMP damage.

Attacks and cooldowns are telegraphed through crosses, sparks, popup text and sound cues. Damage numbers and kill indicators further help convey information in the heat of battle. Each crossed-out kill is followed by noticeable hitstop, making killing enemies incredibly satisfying. Crosshair shape and color can be changed to help contrast them from the game’s background, and vanity effects that conceal enemy positions can be turned on and off at will.

Your ship is briefly able to jump into a different plane of existence in order to avoid taking damage. Jumping allows you to go through terrain and obstacles (which otherwise take regular enemies out), and pass your heat signature onto other enemies when targeted by missiles. As far as I'm aware, this mechanic is unique to HDog. It provides another way of getting rid of homing projectiles, otherwise a nuisance for both novice and veteran players alike.

Another aspect unique to the game is how lenient it is towards collisions with the ground and cloud layer, as well as collision damage in general. In Jet Lancer, dropping to sea level is a death sentence; in HDog, you can survive inside the ground, and even deliberately dive into it to avoid gunfire. In fact, ship collision damage is a stat an entire run can be built around, improved through various passive items acquired throughout it.

Speaking of stats, HDog's stats can be considered an entirely unique aspect of it. There are over 20 attributes being influenced by items, including jet weight, its turn rate, the strength of its boost, acceleration and stall speeds, how much friction and force projectiles extrude, how fast Shields regenerate and how strong they are, the length of the craft's Jump - and that's not talking about Max HP or damage modifiers usually present in other games.

HDog replaces common game terminology with pseudo-realistic jargon, which I find fascinating. Weapons that utilize bullets do so through "Kinetic" damage, lasers are "Photon" weapons, a stun is a "Disorient", fire is "Cascade", difficulty is "Escalation". Beating waves flawlessly increases the Luck stat, which is aptly named "Coolness". There are far too many of those to name, but the game successfully manages to build what could be considered a feasible reality around its far-future setting, that is heavily supported by these tooltips.

Each ship starts with an Active item that can then be exchanged for other items; items that fire missiles, drop mines, clear projectiles, heal you, afflict enemies with debuffs, drop money or containers, and more. Even if you ignore the entire weapon arsenal, all aforementioned mechanics provide a great selection of tools to both deal with and avoid damage, as well as navigate the terrain, and dispatch enemies with speed and precision.

Then come the actual guns, given to you throughout the run at random. Those are split into different damage and projectile types, as well as separated by tiers of quality, with random modifiers on top. Unlike other dogfighting games, HDog elects to go down the Roguelite route, where it drops new items after each wave instead of having you select a loadout before a run begins, then sticking to it for its duration.

As a result, runs end up being highly varied in terms of equipment, greatly extending the replayability of the game. You are also actively encouraged to try new playstyles out, instead of leaning towards a meta through one singular "best" approach. You can still curate your experience by deliberately using ships that start with favorable equipment, however runs will still vastly differ from one another by the end of each session.

There are five main damage types in the game. Kinetic and EMP weapons fire spheres or bolts at varying degrees of effectiveness; Explosive weapons fire grenades, mines, or sticky flechette; Photon weapons fire beams that inflict debuffs, and Melee weapons utilize strike zones, combos, and charge-up attacks. While I appreciate the weapon variety the game puts on offer, players will quickly find out that in true Roguelite fashion, not all weapons are made equal - with Melee weapons being weakest, and Photon weapons strongest.

Despite this imbalance, HDog has other great things going for it. A rewarding meta-progression system ensures you stay occupied for hours upon hours progressively unlocking hundreds of Passives through combining weapon loadouts, losing, winning, or simply playing games, beating enemies and bosses, reaching different zones, using specific ships, completing challenges, and reaching certain waves in Endless mode.

Passive items are also split into tiers, with the lowest usually providing weaker stat upgrades, the highest providing game-carries, and the in-between providing strong stat boosts with a negative trade-off, requiring consideration on the players' part. The Passive pool further modifies a dozen or so unique stats, like shot lifetime, count, sway, homing force, explosion size etc. Each upgrade feels significant, and has a great piece of storytelling behind it, which I highly encourage players to read.

There is a system in place that rewards good performance by raising the Luck stat with every perfect wave, in turn affecting loot drop rates and quality, heal chances, and monetary gains. The longer you play, the higher the difficulty gets, allowing you to make more money at the expense of a heightened dying risk. Destroying ships partially keeps them alive to fire at you as they fall out of the sky, while destroying them fully creates debris, which players then have to avoid if they don’t want to damage their Shields.

This game is an amazing blend of unique game mechanics, with hundreds of items and weapons to unlock, almost two dozen ship variants to utilize, new zone and boss variants to discover, secrets, multiple playable modes, as well as optional lore for those who want to further indulge themselves with the incredible world-building HDog does. It is downright addictive - and I don't use that term lightly. If you're a fan of Roguelites and think a dogfighting game might be up your alley, you owe yourself a favor to try this one.

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Disclaimer: This review contains spoilers. It is only relevant for base game; the DLC has no train management or passenger collection mechanics, hence it is excluded from this criticism.

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Showcasing the fight scenes, food distribution, and train operation in the trailer, as if they were the main focus of this game, is rather dishonest in my opinion. Despite being marketed as a "survival" title, The Final Station is an on-rails experience, a linear storyline with a preset progression path and no dynamic elements requiring adaptation. Expending resources is unnecessary when dying simply brings you back to the last checkpoint, and quitting to the main menu miraculously brings dead passengers back to life.

The game refuses to sacrifice exposition for better gameplay. There are no hard failstates to punish you for wasting resources or neglecting to collect them in the first place. Every step you take to ensure the well-being of your train conductor and passengers is pointless. Passengers' hunger and health magically stop ticking down when you're away from the train; the store page would lead you to believe supplies are actively sought after to prevent this sort of deterioration, but the opposite is in fact true.

Supplies are placed in preset locations in the very same order in each playthrough, with the very same pricetag attached. They are directly added to account balance unless they are one of the 4 things you need to craft ammo and medkits, which you find in abundance either way. Neither crafted item is mandatory for the playthrough (this will be explained shortly), making the supplies you scavenge, and money to fund them, pointless yet again.

Keeping the train "operational" only benefits the passengers, who are meant to provide flavor for the story but are secondary to it in every possible regard. The main character (train conductor) does not require food to survive, and fully heals between the stages, making both food and medkits redundant to the player. Thus, saving passengers only benefits other passengers; you buy food and medkits with their fare which, again, the character does not need. You read their chatter and drop them off a couple of stations later.

If you talk to a person and they are eligible to ride the train, they simply board it. There is no way to distinguish between static NPCs and actual train passengers. These also stay the same between consequent playthroughs. You can't decide which cargo to attach to your train, or which train station to go to next, even though they’re all intertwined. The map interface only provides lore for each station. You can't even see how far you're into the story, because the stations all connect to eachother and the path you take is arbitrary.

The cargo you carry directly corresponds to what kind of malfunctions the train has. Since cargo is obtained in a linear fashion, with each container playing a different part in the story, the order of malfunctions also remains the same. That said, multiple parts cannot malfunction all at once, making train management more of a nuisance than a challenge. I expected to have to juggle multiple problems that continue to pile on a la Papers, Please. If a malfunction is left alone the train will simply stop, no resource is put at stake.

I also had the impression you'd have to manage fuel, speed or power, perhaps upgrade, fix, or switch trains eventually. Decide which location to see next, with some locations containing more or less resources based on your progress. None of that happens. The story decides what to take and where to go, and this does not change between consecutive playthroughs. The store page also gives an impression there is a natural day-night cycle that could affect things, however weather and time of day are static to each stage.

The stages all play the exact same way. You need a code for the Blocker to get to the next station, but the person in charge of it is missing. There are 3 layers to each level, with the main entrance locked and player having to "find" their way around it. This is usually done by climbing to the second floor, obtaining the code along with the key to the main entrance, then backtracking to the entrance, or unlocking the third layer (underground) as a shortcut back to your train. The stages are all 2-3 buildings large, with no room to explore them further.

Throughout the level you encounter what can only be described as zombies. The game insists they are not zombies, but for all intents and purposes that's what they are. Each of the six enemy types uses the exact same AI - move slowly towards the player, go away when they break LoS. Out of those six, only two cannot be engaged in melee range, with the rest easily "cheesable" by moving backwards ever so slightly and mashing the melee button until they go down. Your attacks always reach farther so none of the enemies ever pose a real threat to you.

As a result, shooting things is usually not necessary. The player can throw objects at enemies, but that is not necessary either. When these objects appear in front of locked doors you know there's going to be combat, which kills tension and pre-emptively destroys the horror elements the devs may have sought to implement into a level. Breaking walls is also done through melee attacks. You can execute a charged attack that does 4 times the damage of a regular one, except it doesn’t activate half the time, and it is faster to simply attack 4 times anyway.

The story of the game is convoluted, its conclusion is abrupt and disappointing. The world is going through the "second visitation" event, an arrival from a presumably much smarter alien race. This race sends down pods releasing gas meant to endow humans with super-intelligence. Humans incapable of containing said knowledge turn into hollow husks, aggressive to other human beings. The ones who do turn, but manage to maintain their form, are set on spreading this knowledge further, toppling the government that opposes it.

Said government - the Council - attempts to preserve the unturned human race by building the Guardian. The Guardian is a giant mech meant to launch into space in order to deal with the alien threat. The train conductor is tasked with supplying the parts for this Guardian, while bringing as many passengers with them to the shelter as possible. Despite its successful launch, the Advent cult intercepts it with a missile, dooming the human race to enslavement.

Most details written here are not explained throughout the game, and many of its intricacies are either lost or left up to player interpretation. The MC never speaks, appearing just as one-sided as the NPCs they encounter. All notes and dialogue are riddled with spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and poor sentence structuring. It's a shame the devs couldn't bother hiring an English-speaking proofreader for a game that mainly revolves around written text.

What might be even more shameful is that the devs are charging additional money for a DLC that continues this story, or at least gives players a clearer picture of it. It is also shameful that the game needs to be restarted in order to apply a 16:9 resolution, that the settings menu is no longer accessible once the game begins, that you cannot return to a specific act but rather have to restart the entire game to go back to a previous level. This is too shoddily crafted for a $15 title. I simply cannot in good faith recommend it.