any criticism of AI aside, this game sucks. like, genuinely. you are thrown into levels with a 4 seconds loop audio while you stare at the piss filter, picking upgrades that do not matter other than arbitrary number go up and you get tons of levels while nothing feels like it comes together. so i can see this game being a homerun for a lot of people. the perfect game for the average gamer, completely devoid of any sort of thought put into it.

e: devs are trying to push this as a "steam deck issue". it is not a steam deck issue. the game is simply not fun. insanely disingenuous.

e2: since i feel like being kind (unsure why) i wrote down my full thoughts to people so i'll just copy paste them rather than a generic paragraph above that says the game sucks






I have tried the demo for this game.

Any criticism of the game using AI 100% (allegedly) aside, it fails on every single level.

I guess a bit of context for anyone that would read this and is not aware of the current onslaught of survivors-likes we see out there : in a post Vampire Survivors world, a lot of people have taken to make games similar to it, to varying degrees. Vampire Survivors works because of a variety of factors, ranging from map design, progression, weapons and visual design, and clones will mimic those to varying degrees of success.

With that said, the genre is a low-hanging fruit to copy, because it's not a terribly hard idea to make : pick skills that do stuff and kill ton of enemies. In a nutshell, you are making the WorldDestroyer69 build you would in an ARPG but in a 15-30 minutes format.

So, enter Codex Mortis. In a AI-gen world, and the desperate need everyone has to apply it to.... everything, AI generated games were inevitable. Well, at least an attempt to use it, of course.

This utterly fails on every single level. Where do I even begin? Visually, the game is a mess. good ole piss filter on everything. Terribly unpleasant to look at. Does not help that the UI is just... existing. I don't expect most lower-end games to have a "great" ui but at least a passable one. This one just sucks. Miserable to navigate. No real reason as to how things are nested. Very barebones. Stuff hidden in scrollable menus that do not seem scrollable.

A bad "art" style and terrible UI can be forgiven if the game is fun. I have played games with less than optimal UIs, either in presentation, design or layout, that were still great because the gameplay loop was great or the story was fantastic. Unfortunately, on this level too Codex Mortis utterly fails. A convention of the genre is that your character will have a starting spell, sometimes with matching attributes, to goad you to "build" them a certain way to make your flavor of WorldDestroyer69 build. For some unknown reason (I am being facetious, I know full well there was no reason because the package fails to understand what makes a game a game) you start with 1 weapon and you have to buy slots to slot them in before the game starts. So you start your run with your weapons, without the possibility of mixing them, and all you get are pure number upgrades. Terribly unsatisfying for the genre, but a thing I'm sure a lot of people will love because wow we sure love numbers. What matters for the WorldDestroyer69 build is only the numbers after all, not weird little quirky things like "gameplay feel" or "fun". No amount of fixing starting abilities or the number of them will fix this. The fun of the WorldDestroyer69 build is that it congeals together or fails to, prompting you to rework it. This game fails to understand that on a basic level.

Well, that's all good and well but what about how the game plays? Uh, not great. I tried various levels of tweaking (the game offers different spawn rates and difficulty levels out the game for some reason, instead of being unlockables) and I was just pushed to die and spend my currency to progress. Granted, you do eventually need to do that in other games in the genre but at least it feels like you have a fighting chance. Codex Mortis just tells you to go ♥♥♥♥ yourself and spend that currency because boy you are not going to progress without it. You aren't going to progress with it either because there's no tuning of the gameplay or enemies on any level here, but I feel like that's a bit of a tangent. This could be somewhat forgiven if I felt like I could -make- my own WorldDestroyer69 build but once again, I'm not even allowed to do that!

The cherry on top is the fact that you will hear a very short audio loop through the entire time you are playing, which I can only assume is because the thing is AI generated. Some weird guitar riff. Terribly grating!

Granted, all of this is just a demo as of writing this! So they could fix it. So, how do you fix it?

Well they could try to make a video game, for starters.

any criticism of AI aside, this game sucks. like, genuinely. you are thrown into levels with a 4 seconds loop audio while you stare at the piss filter, picking upgrades that do not matter other than arbitrary number go up and you get tons of levels while nothing feels like it comes together. so i can see this game being a homerun for a lot of people. the perfect game for the average gamer, completely devoid of any sort of thought put into it. e: devs are trying to push this as a "steam deck issue". it is not a steam deck issue. the game is simply not fun. insanely disingenuous. e2: since i feel like being kind (unsure why) i wrote down my full thoughts to people so i'll just copy paste them rather than a generic paragraph above that says the game sucks I have tried the demo for this game. Any criticism of the game using AI 100% (allegedly) aside, it fails on every single level. I guess a bit of context for anyone that would read this and is not aware of the current onslaught of survivors-likes we see out there : in a post Vampire Survivors world, a lot of people have taken to make games similar to it, to varying degrees. Vampire Survivors works because of a variety of factors, ranging from map design, progression, weapons and visual design, and clones will mimic those to varying degrees of success. With that said, the genre is a low-hanging fruit to copy, because it's not a terribly hard idea to make : pick skills that do stuff and kill ton of enemies. In a nutshell, you are making the WorldDestroyer69 build you would in an ARPG but in a 15-30 minutes format. So, enter Codex Mortis. In a AI-gen world, and the desperate need everyone has to apply it to.... everything, AI generated games were inevitable. Well, at least an attempt to use it, of course. This utterly fails on every single level. Where do I even begin? Visually, the game is a mess. good ole piss filter on everything. Terribly unpleasant to look at. Does not help that the UI is just... existing. I don't expect most lower-end games to have a "great" ui but at least a passable one. This one just sucks. Miserable to navigate. No real reason as to how things are nested. Very barebones. Stuff hidden in scrollable menus that do not seem scrollable. A bad "art" style and terrible UI can be forgiven if the game is fun. I have played games with less than optimal UIs, either in presentation, design or layout, that were still great because the gameplay loop was great or the story was fantastic. Unfortunately, on this level too Codex Mortis utterly fails. A convention of the genre is that your character will have a starting spell, sometimes with matching attributes, to goad you to "build" them a certain way to make your flavor of WorldDestroyer69 build. For some unknown reason (I am being facetious, I know full well there was no reason because the package fails to understand what makes a game a game) you start with 1 weapon and you have to buy slots to slot them in before the game starts. So you start your run with your weapons, without the possibility of mixing them, and all you get are pure number upgrades. Terribly unsatisfying for the genre, but a thing I'm sure a lot of people will love because wow we sure love numbers. What matters for the WorldDestroyer69 build is only the numbers after all, not weird little quirky things like "gameplay feel" or "fun". No amount of fixing starting abilities or the number of them will fix this. The fun of the WorldDestroyer69 build is that it congeals together or fails to, prompting you to rework it. This game fails to understand that on a basic level. Well, that's all good and well but what about how the game plays? Uh, not great. I tried various levels of tweaking (the game offers different spawn rates and difficulty levels out the game for some reason, instead of being unlockables) and I was just pushed to die and spend my currency to progress. Granted, you do eventually need to do that in other games in the genre but at least it feels like you have a fighting chance. Codex Mortis just tells you to go fuck yourself and spend that currency because boy you are not going to progress without it. You aren't going to progress with it either because there's no tuning of the gameplay or enemies on any level here, but I feel like that's a bit of a tangent. This could be somewhat forgiven if I felt like I could -make- my own WorldDestroyer69 build but once again, I'm not even allowed to do that! The cherry on top is the fact that you will hear a very short audio loop through the entire time you are playing, which I can only assume is because the thing is AI generated. Some weird guitar riff. Terribly grating! Granted, all of this is just a demo as of writing this! So they could fix it. So, how do you fix it? Well they could try to make a video game, for starters.