Recent reviews by GaeaNyx

As someone who plays a lot of Survivor type games, it always intrigues me to see how each game differs from the others. This one does it by almost entirely skirting around the usual gameplay of killing things. It took me way to many runs to figure out that this game doesn't actually want you to kill things. It just wants you to run around for 20 minutes. Unfortunately to finish a map you do have to kill a boss so if you happen to live that long you're still just going to die more than likely. It'll take you too long to kill it and then the Unkillable Clocks will spawn and they'll swarm you.

Even when you've got just about everything maxed out, you have to fight for every run. Meta progression doesn't feel nearly as impactful as it does in other games and requirements have pretty steep scaling for the last level or 2 that make grinding for them feel not worth it. There are 3 maps and then three Cursed maps which are retextured versions of the base maps. 2 of the maps have 2 varieties of mini boss that spawn and one map has 1 miniboss, each map has its own boss.

What I noticed immediately from my initial playing was that the game seemed harder than these games usually feel. Around level 7 or so is when it felt like XP started to drop off and I was running around just trying not to die. This made every run feel like an eternal nightmare of futeily weaving through an increasing horde just trying to collect a few more coins to maybe afford a Meta upgrade. I didn't realize it but my first session must have lasted 7 or 8 hours. Unfortunately the game feels incredibly shallow for how difficult it feels so most of your runs feel like getting kicked in the balls by a kindergartener. Your Dodge Roll is the starting active for most of the unlockable characters and can be replaced during your run, or some characters start with different actives. By far the best one is Mrs. T who starts out with the Healing active. All the others pale in comparison to it bc its only one that actively keeps you alive instead of just staving off death for a couple seconds.

I have 14 and a half hours in the game and I just finished unlocking all the items and I feel no desire to continue trying to complete the 3 cursed maps. Allegedly they unlock 3 new characters, and there may be a secret item or something I haven't unlocked by unlocking everything else, but at this point the game loop is so frustrating that I just don't care. I spent the first half of my game time dying over and over trying to feel like I was making any progress, the next third of my game time feeling like I was making any progress, and the last 20% feeling cheated. This is because the game doesn't tell you that you have to do a run to unlock the boss for the map which you can fight *on the run after* and also doesn't tell you that the unlock order is linear, so I died on the second map a few times, played the 3rd map, beat the 3rd map, and didn't get to do the boss or escape. I just had to die to the endless spawn at the end of the timer. Didn't even get to unlock the boss. So I went back to the 2nd map and did a run to unlock that boss, then did another run to beat the boss, then I got to do it again for the 3rd map. I did most of this after unlocking Mrs T because the difference between feeling like you're being kicked in the balls and feeling like you're kicking the game in the balls is whether or not you have the healing active.

My final complaint about the game is the reroll system. There isn't really a reroll system. You can buy up to 3 from the meta progression tab but while the game says you get 1-3 rerolls per level, what it really means is you get 1-3 rerolls per run, and the cost of obtaining them is not worth the price of admission given how much more expensive they are compared to everything else. This game does not inspire me to play long enough for them to matter, and by the time I could afford them I've done everything and then some.

In the end, I did manage to get 14 hours of gameplay from it and there's still technically a few things I could still do if I really wanted to, but I don't. Ultimately I don't think I'd recommend this game unless running around and dying for 8 hours sounds appealing to you. It's only $5 so I'm not particularly upset with my purchase, but after having the experience I don't think I'd do it again.

Its a cute game. Not incredibly challenging, so if that's what you're looking for then this is not the game for you. This is the sort of game I would use to introduce my nephew to this genre and I'd be interested to see how it plays for my friends who are "really bad at games"

It definitely feels like the sort of game you'd use to teach, since the mechanics are not terribly advanced and there doesn't feel like an overwhelming amount of options. While the weapons do feel like they're each different, a lot of them feel similar enough that I'm not sure there's *that* much difference, aside from the Magic Wand, which I haven't played with very much. From my initial testing it feels like Bo Staff is the strongest in the game by far. One thing I didn't really like is that you only seem to be able to purchase 3 new cards for the upgrade deck each run, and I'm not sure if they're random or progressive but the gameplay is so simple that I don't feel compelled to play it more and find out. It does seem like there are different builds but the game effectively boils down to a boss rush and trying not to get hit on the way.

After dying, the game gives you the option to play on an easier or harder difficulty, and reading the descriptions I wondered if it was set to the easier setting by default, but I selected the harder of the 2 and the game seemed the same.

The game isn't that expensive and the story is cute. If you're ok with it being pretty simple and want something small and cute, then give the game a try. If you consider yourself to be bad at games, maybe this is a game you'd enjoy. If you're trying to find something to introduce to a child and don't want to overwhelm them, I think this is a good candidate. If your favorite game series is Dark Souls or anything else made by Fromsfot, save your money.

This one is interesting to me. My first hour or two playing it I was intrigued. After the other games I've reviewed over the last couple days, this one felt like there was finally some substance. Then I spent 4 or 5 hours grinding through the first level in half hour chunks bc for some reason the difficulty spike from the entire stage compared to the last boss falls off a cliff. Its not even particularly difficult I wouldn't say, but the challenge it comes from "did you build yourself in a manner that allows you to stay a screen away from the boss and still damage it and also do you have enough hp to survive him telefragging you?"
It feels like there's a lot of content for the game but a lot of it ends up feeling redundant or like it has no real place because by the time you get around to acquiring certain upgrades, you're already getting mid or high level counterparts and skipping the smaller ones. Maybe there will be more to do with individual sets later, hinted at by one of the quests. While there are only 2 maps at the moment, the first map feels fun to play for several hours and then you kinda wish you were doing anything else rather than trying to kill that damn bird.

I liked the upgrade options for the skills more when I finally got around to investigating them. At first it felt like the individaul upgrades were arbitrary because some of the more general upgrades are, but they do actually get stronger options periodically, and I think they cap at level 10. There are quirks with some of them that feel almost charming except that they stop doing what you want them to do preciesly when you NEED them to do it.

As for the progression system, it feels like it needs some finetuning. You have gold to buy equipment which you can then slot onto your character to improve different traits, and you have blood shards to improve your meta stats. Meta stats do not have the same weight with how much each one costs, which is just fine, but in order to acquire new items in the shop you have to spend an inordinate amount of blood shards to do so. I've been taking a break on this game since finally beating the first stage, so I haven't played the second stage, unlocked the 2nd set of characters, or gotten to try out the last couple spells I unlocked, but I've got most of the meta progression done and farming the 600 shards needed to get new items in the shop just sounds harrowing. There is also a hard mode unlocked for the first map which might improve the grinding but I don't think difficulty was the issue in the first place. For perspective, I think the most expensive meta upgrade cost something like 200 shards, give or take and the most I've gotten from one run is somewhere in the 200 or 300 range, accounting for a quest completion or 2 that gave me a significant chunk.

There are 6 playable characters at the moment, and of the 3 I've unlocked they do a pretty good job of feeling distinct and having different playstyles that do require you to play differently instead of choosing the same skills and going afk for 20 minutes. What there is of the story so far is interesting enough to want to find out more and I'm interested to see what content lies ahead that hasn't been revealed in the game menus.

While my experience with this game was a jarring back and forth between being very into it for the first couple hours to suddenly feeling stuck in some sort of time loop for the next 5, I think the game is a solid pickup for $5 price tag and I'm looking forward to future updates and development. I'd like to see some balance in progression and maybe a balance between the first half hour of each stage compared to the stage boss, but overall I'm happy with the experience so far. My one final complaint is that I have not had such an aggravating side quest/unlock quest experience with the "don't heal for 15 minutes" due to unintentionally picking up an unassuming health shard since doing the Robot Unlock in Enter the Gungeon

DISCLAIMER/CLARIFICATION: I think it's more effective to label this review as a Do Not Recommend because people are more likely to review it and put any stock into it. On top of that, it is a critique and my feelings are that this game needs a lot of development for me to feel like its worth picking up. I got pretty much all the current content in 2 10ish minute runs. Most of my play time was spent in the main screen or sitting in a menu texting someone. Whats here is good but there's not a whole lot of it by any stretch.

There isn't really much to review at the moment. There's 2 maps and 3 sort of skill archetypes, mixing and matching 2 of the 3 into your available skill pool. As things are now you pretty much max out all your skills by the end of the run. Once you figure out the way things operate and get used to the controls (or setup the controls so they're easier for you) its pretty straightforward. Totems and Summons are set to manual cast while Spells are set to autocast by default. I haven't played with a Summons build, but Spells feel really powerful for not having to micromanage them and Totems kinda feel like you just spam them until you're out of mana then wait for it to recharge. You start with one summon as your first skill and from the way my first run went I assume summons will work the same as totems. Micromanaging seems like it would get annoying but the differences between one skill or another seem pretty minimal and I feel like you can spam any one of them and not have any issues.

As far as meta progression goes, there's not a lot here atm and I don't know what is planned. It doesn't seem that you have to spend a resource unlocking any of the skills you don't start with (just totems and summons, I think you start with all the current spells) and I was able to unlock all of the totems and most of the summons after my first run. I did one run for each map and a significant portion of the second map i was paused and texting my friend, my total play time is about an hour so there's not a whole lot of content at the moment. The second map doesn't even have a boss it just ends when the timer reaches 0.

When you kill stuff theres a few different orbs they can drop. Blue is your in-run shop resource, which spawns in the first map but not the second. Green Orbs are xp, Gold Orbs which seemed to drop in the second map only as far as I could tell don't seem to have any use currently and I think they'll be used either to purchase more skills later when added to the game or for meta progression trees, or both. Lastly there's red orbs which act as a different currency you use to open up what are effectively treasure boxes that respawn on a timer. Their cost to open goes up each time and the cooldown on them increases. They can give you a random skill or two from the pool at a random rarity and you can have multiple of the same skill (not sure that has any use whatsoever for summons and totems as the cooldowns are low enough to spam and also having a lower level of the same skill just seems worse than having a different skill at a higher level.) From what I can tell if you have your skill slots full then it gives you a random skill that matches the rarity of what you have so that they upgrade to the next rarity. Sometimes it does not give you a skill, it also has full heal and full mana regen potions. Final note on the orbs is that blue ones don't drop in the second map because instead of a treasure box and a shop like the first map, there's just 4 treasure boxes (they operate independently of each other so opening one doesn't affect the cost and cooldown of the other 3)

The shop is pretty straightforward and I don't feel its worth talking too much about. It opens on a cooldown, you can spend your blue orbs, it sells skills in your pool at various rarities and you can pay to reroll it once. They also sell full health and mana potions for 50 orbs each (a trivial price.) While the shop is on cooldown you are able to enter it again to purchase anything that was rolled. After the cooldown it rolls into a new selection.

Level ups feel mostly inconsequential at the moment. A lot of them feel like placeholders or arbitrary due to the low difficulty ceiling. I didn't feel like I needed HP increases, any of the spawn rate cooldown options (one each for each archetype of skill, again I don't think they do anything relevant for summons and totems, not sure if they matter for spells either.) Move speed is always good because it means you can avoid stuff but there isn't that much to avoid aside from the map 1 boss attack. Magnet range is almost always a solid pickup in Survivor type games but here it just doesn't feel like it matters as things stand currently. Red Orb %incrase affecting how much you get from each pickup (currently 10 per I think) and it caps at 20 until you level it up with Red Orb Max Total increases which do not seem to increase it as much as they say they do. Its actually a pain and one of the most important upgrades you can get because the treasure boxes take an increasing amount to open each time which means after the 3rd or 4th opening you have to go to the box, dump in your orbs, then go collect a few more to refill and finish opening. They also have a field around the box that if you don't leave will not recognize you have more orbs to put in. Xp increase doesn't seem too meaningful either. The only upgrades I found myself really wanting to see more of were Max Mana and Mana Regen Rate bc those let you spam more stuff. As a final note, leveling up gives you a mana refill as well which is nice.

For $5 I think its worth seeing what the developers have in store but I certainly think its hard to justify. I don't want to take money back from the devs if I'm using their product, but it currently stands as one of those "I'll play this so you don't have to" experiences. I'm willing to wait and see what the devs have in store and I think if it gets more fleshed out it could be worth picking up. I think what they've done with the level designs is interesting in the ways they make you play differently, even if the game choices are so inconsequential at this point that it doesn't matter. As it stands, I don't think I'd recommend this game but I also don't think it's deserving of a vote against it either.

As someone who quite enjoys Horde Survival games, I am interested to see how this one develops. At the moment, it feels pretty barren and the progression is far too slow for the amount of content. At the moment you have 2 weapons, from what I can tell 2 maps, and 3 progression trees that after a certain point take an abysmally long time to acquire a point for. There's no timer to tell you how long you've been in a run even though that appears to be the mechanic for which the round progression occurs (as is standard for this type of game)

As things stand now, there are 4 types of enemies, 3 of them showing up in the first map and 3 more showing up in the second map with 2 of them being reskins of monsters in the first map. Ravens with helmets, hopping skulls, and skeleteons in the first map, the ravens and heads in the second map with flying eyeballs, which provide the first real sense of shaking things up.

The 2 bosses are not too complex, the first one seemed way more fleshed out than the second. Its a giant flaming head that when taking enough damage splits into 2 smaller heads. This type of boss is not uncommon, but actually I felt like this one stood out from the others. The heads have a good amount of health even at their smallest and the area attack they have starts to feel more pressing when theres 8 of them. I'm still not certain theres ever any real danger from it if you keep moving but it at least feels like there is. I only fought the second boss once (and given my experience in the first map its possible there are more maps but that's a separate issue) and as far as I could tell its a big dumb skeleton who looks like it has more range than it really does. I didn't see it ever do an attack, I just kited around it and hit it for a while and then it died. Once you kill the stage boss, an infinite horde is spawned and you can run around for a few seconds but eventually they will kill you. I'm willing to consider that this part of the game is where you're going to rack up the experience for Meta Progression points given the drastically increased spawn of enemies, but they're so beefy that at the moment it feels like you're not really getting anywhere.

There are a few different level up paths you can choose from in the run and you do get to combine a few of them, though after about level 6 or 7 the experience required for level ups seems to increase drastically, so if you don't end up with a decent perk set by then its going to become even more of a slog than it already is. Somehow in spite of this, it feels like there aren't enough options for the amount of leveling you get in a run, as you can complete 2 or 3 paths and have the leftover "choose this upgrade to marginally increase one type of damage" perks showing up for a fair number of levels.

Given the Early Access I don't want to judge the content too harshly, though I do feel that $9 is steep for whats there at the moment. The art style seems simple enough and there's not too much variety. I do like the simplicity of the art, its not overly barren and I find it charming, I just don't think this game compares at all to other games of a similar price point or even ones that can be had for $5 or less from where the game stands now. One thing I noticed mechanically that I've seen maybe once or twice before is that there is no Critical Chance mechanic. I don't feel one way or the other about it.

Where I will critique the hardest is that this game UI tells you next to NOTHING and that makes it feel incredibly harrowing. There's very little sense of meta progress which you can't quite make sense of until you've made a little bit as the tracker is runes on the border of the level up monolith, but even then there isn't any display that tells you how close anyting actually is. As I mentioned before there's no timer to track how far you are into the run, even though it tells you your run time when you die. There isn't any major indication that what I assume are perks that haven't been implemented into the game yet are just not implemented and not something that you haven't unlocked yet. Normally for Early Access games theres some kind of info on the state of things and some sort of roadmap to indicate some rough idea of whats planned, but not so with Plains of Havoc. You just hop right in and hope for the best.

The game is pretty good for the most part. There's a decent amount of customization options for whether you want to use weapons or magic, but while I haven't gotten to do a magic build play through it seems like several of the spells are next to useless. I can't see them being very effective. I also have no idea how you'd beat the final boss with just magic, which brings me to my complaints.

The difficulty for the game is pretty well balanced, a lot of the challenges can be revisited later on but with some perseverance and a bit of luck you can get through them when you encounter them. The game really makes you learn in stages, first by customizing your builds for different encounter and then finally with the final boss, resetting its HP 4 or 5 times and running away to hide for however long while it fills the screen with bullets. Also, getting through its final bar of hp only to not realize you have to do some more stuff or else it regenerates AGAIN is ♥♥♥♥♥♥ ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ after the sometimes 10 minute fight you already survived. Other than that, the warning screen that pops up for every Ambush encounter and boss lasts wayyyy too long. It should be like half of what it is, or give an option to skip it.