Recent reviews by alveolate

too counter-intuitive, both in terms of game UI and progression structure. just at my 2nd prestige and i don't even know what i should be doing any more. it feels like anything you do could either be wrong or just be more of the exact same. why would you make progression so cryptic? why does a player have to risk days of progress with a prestige just to learn if they chose correctly?

not to mention how half the game is just toggling around different pages looking for stuff to upgrade, and the upgrades are all exactly the same boring stuff.

there is simply not enough to hook a player into going deeper.

easily one of the best roguelike / roguelite / bullet hell/heaven games out there.

move over vampire survivors.

first off, the graphics and art design is just chef's kiss. very high quality execution of the viking concept, along with some really interesting use of viking lore. after playing this for a while, you'll be left wondering why most of the other similar topdown shooters are stuck with pixel graphics, when THIS is possible.

gameplay itself is fresh and enjoyable, with a solid learning curve that rewards players at all levels of skill. sure, it is somewhat harder than other VS clones, but once you understand the basics the game feels very well-tuned to be challenging yet beatable. not only does the game have a great progression setup, it also does a fantastic job letting the player feel like they've progressed as they grab each unlock/achievement.

the icing on this tasty, tasty cake is... the (small indie) dev team works hard and posts very regular updates. this is become sort of an "industry standard" for such games, but the updates are extremely responsive to player feedback, especially on discord: not only have some fan-suggested features been added already, but even fan-suggested new content too.

this is a definite hard recommend.

crashed 3x in one day.

game expects you to "grind" but can't even handle being run for more than 2h reliably.

oh, and having to login with external account EVERY TIME annoys the ♥♥♥♥ out of me. what, steam login ain't good enough for your gacha game? really?

if you enjoyed vampire survivors and 20mis till dawn, you might be thinking: yea i'll pwn them mobs in this one too! well, not exactly.

first off, you can't fire unless you stop moving, so if you're used to dota2 orbwalking or lol stutterstepping, you'll be right at home here -- at least in terms of its most basic gameplay rhythm.

second, you only get THREE upgrade choices per level up, and you only get THREE choices per object (special/unique loot from bosses). the first few runs, going in blind, are going to feel much more like a roguelite than a yolo kill everything shmup. if you get a nice run with good upgrades/objects, don't expect that to keep happening! RNG's a ♥♥♥♥♥.

third, the game is not exactly very forthcoming with information. things like 'how do i unlock new chars' or 'what exactly do some numbers mean' are not super clear in the game. i recommend going to settings and checking "always show stats" so that you can see how some numbers grow, and get a rough sense of what 'area' and 'cooldown' do for your various object effects.

that all said, the overall game is a very playable take on the resurging topdown bullethell genre that VS kinda brought back. devs are pretty responsive and there are weekly updates, with lots of new content planned. things will keep changing and hopefully, improving. but don't expect the game to actually become easy, where you can hit some godmode setup and just afk on screen... that's not this game!

i usually don't enjoy platformers, but this one has pretty fun unique combos for all its characters. gameplay is very solid for what seems to be a pretty small game. it's also a treat to hear the original VAs again!

however, the story is not very long... you'll probably complete it within 2-4h. it also doesn't add much to the canon.

recommend buying at 50% off; HIGHLY recommend if 75% off. otherwise, only recommended if you really love the franchise and/or rooster teeth.

just absurdly addictive fun for $3, absolutely worth every cent.

a pretty simple roguelike/shmuplike with an amazing roster of weapons/powerups, along with regular updates by devs.

nothing new, more mindless grind, weak QoL options, basically relearn IMTD with some minor changes and feel like you've wasted more time.

the best part is you get to go to discord and complain about the game's weaknesses and get responded to by a bunch of jaded misfits who did the grind and thinks nothing is bad.

controls are just extremely annoying. end game content is very limited. "meta" builds basically dictate how your character works and everyone just has to cookie cutter the same thing. overall feels like 1-2 years from a reasonable product that could challenge diablo 2 or torchlight.

only thing that is great is the discord community tho. very helpful people, kept me playing for at least 3 weeks more than i would otherwise care to.

worth a try if you like hack and slash, since it's f2p... but not worth investing too much effort into, imo.

full f2p here.

it's definitely playable without dumping loads of cash into gacha - in fact, i'd say that's not the smart way to play this. a lot of the guardians that work well in the current meta require devoted daily gameplay to open chests and roll for large amounts of cards needed to upgrade them to specific levels in order to unlock powerful passives. IOW: grind2win or pay2skip

the gameplay is surprisingly deep for what appears to be just a gacha phone game. there are 2 main modes: pvp and co-op (pve). build a deck of 5 guardians + 1 master, and join the corresponding queue. matchmaking is fairly rudimentary - you will find yourself facing players with higher level cards/accounts at the start; but if you play well you will beat enough of them to eventually get to silver 1 / gold 3 (where i am currently sorta stuck).

the game has a significant learning curve: there are around 47 guardians and 9 masters to mix'n'match, and each card has its own stats, unique abilities. and synergies with other cards. right now, the balancing is not too great tho, some cards are clearly more powerful or easier to use, and quite a few of them are 'legendary' (i.e. gacha unlocks aka "scout"). they definitely have more powerful abilities that look super broken at first glance; but legends are also far more difficult to find, so it is quite difficult/expensive to get a legend with 1 or more passives unlocked. with a well-built deck and good play, a zero legend player can still beat one with multiple legends (unless RNG).

example: [Saigar vs Roo/Golem/Aqua]
i have a lv2 Saigar, pretty solid legendary guardian with high dmg and a strong ability that gives aoe dmg OR slow; but it rarely does more total dmg than my lv6 Roo or lv6 Burning Golem - even if i stack more stars onto the Saigars. conversely, Saigar is also never as good for slows than my lv6 Aqualop. in other words, Saigar is a decent card with mixed utility/high-ish damage; but never a specialist in either.

i think the game is worth a try, especially if you enjoy fast-paced TD battles. there is a discord if you need to ask questions, some of us are still there daily. as per usual for gacha games, don't sink any money until you learn the game and are certain you wanna play for at least a couple of months.

update: it's been 4 months of playing daily... and the game still has a great setup; but the devs are just really bad at balancing it. every patch some meta deck is basically unbeatable unless the player misplays. you can be really practiced on some particular cards and the devs might nerf a key card and poof, there goes everything. game is just too dependent on dev balance whims, while high whales stay sequestered up in their diamond tier with enhanced rewards and just get to level every new card / newly buffed meta decks out of f2p reach.

in other words, it's fun for a few months f2p, after that it's just waiting for devs fave of the month to match with what you invested in. the grind just got to me and i can no longer recommend this.

game gets stuck after maybe 4 prestiges.

nice concept but you left major bugs on release and no responses to reports in 2 days. that's not how you do a steam release. good luck with your future releases.

update: took the dev a while, but the early bug got fixed at least. points for the funny reply i guess.

tentative recommend for now while i wait for the next bug :D
so far at least the update included quite a bit of new content too, so seems good.