Recent reviews by Onuma

I love Archons--what a fun way to innovate on a genre which has been overloaded with Vampire Survivors copycats!

In this action, horde-slaying roguelite, each of your analog sticks (or keyboard inputs) controls one of two Archons who use the power of Jolly Cooperation destroy bug enemies. Alternatively, you can use local coop to play with a friend, each of you controlling one Archon at a time. Collect glowing stuff from enemies' corpses to level up, accessing weapons and upgrades that you've already unlocked.
After a few minutes you'll encounter a boss who will toss varying patterns of Bullet Hell style attacks at you--most are simple to dodge, but the fact that you need to do it with two characters on two separate, simultaneously, means you can overload your brain easily and become prone to mistakes.

When you die, you can spend your hard-won currency between rounds, unlocking new powers, abilities, and stat upgrades depending on what kind of currency you've accumulated. Extra crit chance, HP, pickup range, etc. are available, as you might expect. It's an olde formula within the realm of roguelites, but it works.

I've only played this a very short time (just above 30 minutes at the time of writing this review) but this concept hasn't been well executed since Brothers: A Tales Of Two Sons was released. For under $10, this is a winner.

Swarm Grinder takes the Vampire Survivors formula and adds difficulty and branches weapons into different choices, similar to how 20 Minutes Til Dawn functions. Honestly, it's solid.

FWIW the game doesn't run well on my Steam Deck. Text and prompts display intermittently. It runs well otherwise, but I can't see which upgrades I'm choosing.

So, you like to play Castlevania?

This is the trio of games released for the Nintendo DS circa 2006-2010; some of the best Castlevania games ever released. If you're a fan of the genre or series, this is a must-have collection.

It's still the best ARPG published to date.

Take all of the good mechanics from Titan Quest and make them better, change the setting to a post-apocalyptic Victorian steampunk, and you have the basics of Grim Dawn. The dual class system is still one of the most fulfilling mechanics in any ARPG, giving you loads of customization options--every one of them is good enough to get through the game on the toughest difficulty, although some will naturally synergize better than others.

GD is a more involved and technical ARPG than Diablo, but less so when compared to Path of Exile. If you're looking for that sweet spot of moderate complexity, without requiring a spreadsheet or calculator (those do exist for this game, if that's your jam), then this is the game for you.

And if you like mods, there are loads available. I'm currently playing through "Reign of Terror" which recreates Diablo 2 inside Grim Dawn. It's solid, and I'm dual-classing an Amazon & Necromancer to great effect (so far).

Give this small developer a few bucks and have a great time with an excellent game.

Excellent blend of tower defense, resource management, and exploration in a package that can run on a toaster. Also has 4-player online coop, ftw!

Not to be confused with "ENDLESS™ Dungeon" which was made by the same devs--it's also an outstanding game, but tacks toward twin stick shooter mixed with TD instead.

Robot + DAKKA = Fun.

So far, only a couple of hours into Axon TD: Uprising, I'm enjoying it. Maze-based TD with up to 4-player co-op? That's practically unheard of! FWIW, I haven't tried public matchmaking at all yet, but it is available and easily accessible.

Being a long-time TD veteran, I hopped on and straight away played a couple of rounds with a buddy--we lost horribly--before I decided to visit the tutorial. While you could glean most of the information presented in the tutorial by just playing random skirmishes or co-op rounds, it was helpful and quick.

The biggest thing Axon TD brings to the table is allowing you to manipulate the level itself. You can, of course, place towers and obstacles ("Blockers") along a given route to redirect enemies. But the elegance of the developer's design comes into play with "Adds" and "Recycles" which allow you to add new tiles over blank spaces or remove spaces from potential paths altogether. The ability to change the level layout itself allows players a high degree of freedom in creating an interesting and effective pathway with which to tackle the challenges of each level. There are also "Rotators" which are platforms that the player can rotate, helping dictate maze routes, in between rounds. Once you build on a Rotator, you cannot rotate it any longer--it becomes as static as the rest of the level. As far as I'm aware, this is the first time a TD game has allowed this level of freedom.

The towers themselves and the mobs/monsters/creeps ("Axons" in this case) are mostly run-of-the-mill. There are swarms which are susceptible to AoE, shields which regenerate, armor which mitigates a portion of damage, enemies which can bypass mazing to a degree, etc. You can sell two towers for a 100% refund between each wave, but you cannot sell any towers once you have expended your quantity of Sells (I know, it should be pluralized as "sales," but this is a game term with a different connotation, so I'm using it this way instead.)

There are no "elemental" damage types which many TD games utilize, but certain towers will be able to neutralize or bypass enemy shields and/or armor.

Currency accumulation is as you might expect, with each Axon kill yielding a small amount and another chunk gained at the completion of a wave. Also, the game pauses in between waves, at least during normal gameplay modes--I haven't delved far enough into this title to observe whether this may change.

There's a second currency/resource of a sort, called Power. Power is used to upgrade your towers, either individually or globally. Global upgrades affect all of a single type of tower, e.g. every Missile Launcher you have on the field, but cost more power. Individual upgrades change the characteristics in ways that can help you better face challenges of the level; the first may add to a towers RoF, the second may reduce AoE but increase damage, and the third may apply a debuff, just as examples.

Power can also be used to call in special abilities known as Overloads. You can activate an Overload to buff towers, debuff enemies, cause damage, or deploy other effects to the Axons, such as temporarily disabling their special abilities (regen, shields, etc.)

After each wave, the player can choose a reward. This can be a moderate amount of Currency, more Power, or additional uses of Sells, Adds, Blockers, or Recycles. You can also select a passive ability ("Active Techs"), such as added Currency or Power after completing a perfect wave (no leaks), or +15% damage for your towers during the first few seconds of each wave, etc. These rewards seem to be offered randomly, at least outside of the campaign levels.

As for the single player campaign, I'm only through the first level so far. You're initially presented with a decently voice-acted cutscene, which plays out much like you might read a comic book (drawn panels with light animations), after which point you're dropped into the first level with minimal access to towers and no special abilities, at least initially. As the level progresses, you're introduced to the basic mechanics of the game. Upon success, you're shot out into an overworld map which seems to have several dozen levels through which you'll eventually progress. Some of these level nodes split paths, though I'm not yet sure whether you can choose one or both paths, or whether you will be able to revisit previously completed levels.

It's rare that any real innovation comes to a genre as flooded with games as Tower Defense. Axon has, so far, been refreshing in that respect. I give a firm recommendation, even at full price, if you're a TD enthusiast--especially if you have others to play with.

Runs like absolute poop on my machine. I can't say this is the devs' fault, but as my rig is from 2018, but this is the first and only game it's been incapable at running, regardless of my game settings. The frame rate is middling when nothing is going on, even at 1080p, and horrible when even a few enemies or effects appear. Neither does it run on the Steam Deck.

I can't honestly recommend a game which doesn't run on a older-but-viable system, or hasn't been updated to run on a Deck or similar handheld hardware.

If Fatshark updates their game to be more compatible, I'll change my review at a later time. As of this moment, it's a hard pass--I just wish I could refund the money my friend spent to gift it to me!

Think of it like a twin-stick Vampire Survivors, with all of the jank of a Chinese asset flip game. Fun with a friend via online coop!

TL;DR: Great game for $20 (full price as of this review)

NCWHTD is one of the better Tower Defense games to release in the last few years--and it has online coop! In coop, both currency ("creds") and ability power ("pow") are split 50/50 between the two players. Managing dozens of towers' upgrades is fairly easy with the Automatic Upgrade feature included, although you can't prioritize "damage first, then range" or anything of that sort, as the purchase is made exclusively at the least expensive option, on upward.

The level design ranges from simplistic to twisted & warped with complexity. The simplest maps have fairly flat terrain with few obstacles (some of which are destructible, optionally), while the complicated ones can be zig-zagging cubes, roller coaster tracks, conveyor belts which can help or hinder your enemies' speed, built-in floor traps, and partially-constructed floors which you can opt to leave as gaps or finish and build atop. On top of that, most turrets have a line-of-sight limitation, so it's never as simple as stacking a wall of shotguns and letting them Danny DeVito the creeps away.

While it is not perfect, it is a solid title which has provided me many hours of entertainment. It has multiple difficulty levels, and each stage can continue past its standard goal in Endless mode, should you want to keep going.

As a side note: I would like to know more details about how some of the game mechanics work (how long do Freeze effects last? Can poison actually kill a target or merely deplete its HP? etc.), however, as well as being given more data for the performance of each individual turret (number of kills, effective DPS, avg. TTK, etc.) so I can use that to increase the efficacy of my maze building--I'm always trying to get to a new personal best, whether solo or with a friend.

Many, many creeps, in fact, were harmed.