Recent reviews by Gadgetguy

An isometric Roguelite that masters the mechanics of a twin stick shooter and its interesting premise, but uses them in frustrating ways. There is also not enough content to make it enjoyable and replayable, there aren’t any interesting combos that can cause the game to go crazy and change, and there isn’t any real customization to speak of in terms of skills or upgrades.

👍 Pros 👍
Unique premise

👎 Cons 👎
Repetitive gameplay
Disappointing upgrades
Frustrating difficulty curve

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To be an alien parasite
Being an alien parasite that can take over human minds to enslave them to its will isn’t easy. For one, an alien parasite’s body is made of gelatinous goo that explodes with the slightest poke, let alone a baseball bat strike or a bullet, but that is why the fleshy meat sacks are so important. Hyper Parasite puts the player in such a situation where they must pilot this odd creature in an isometric twin-stick shooter which has strong and interesting mechanics but fails at my three Cs of a good Roguelite. I include in this review what must be included for it to be set alongside the hall of fame greats.

Bodies & Difficulty Spike
As previously mentioned, the parasite itself is very weak, which is why the main mechanic focuses on taking over bodies which each have their own individual health-pools, normal attack, and special ability. Starting out, the player is only able to possess a few enemies but when killing the ones yet unlocked, there is a chance their brain can be obtained and stored in a lab adjacent to the shop. Money can then be invested in unlocking their DNA so that they can be possessed, opening up new possibilities in terms of abilities. This implementation does cause some issues when moving on to the next level, of which there are five, when it turns out that all of the bodies for the next level are locked behind the brains that have only a chance of dropping. This causes an intense difficulty spike which ends up being extremely frustrating. The reason for this is that by the time the player is able to reliably get to the next level, they will have unlocked almost all of the characters from the previous level, making the latter extremely easy because every time the player’s host body dies, the game spawns another one which ends up making it nearly impossible to fail. To then be hit by everything to be locked again feels like an unwelcome surprise.

Upgrades
Another disappointment arrives in the form of upgrades. They can be bought at the shop or rarely dropped by killed enemies. These upgrades come in three different categories such as single use items like a sentry turret, damage over time, or a stat up. The single use items are rather costly and not especially helpful as they take away from the main currency of unlocking bodies which makes them feel useless and ultimately, in most cases where the player buys them, detrimental. Damage over time upgrades can be helpful, especially when there aren’t a lot of stat ups in a run, but as, upgrades they ultimately leave a lot to be desired since they are only useful in the early game. Finally, the most important upgrade to talk about would be the stat ups. They come in three flavors: extra life, more damage, and more defense. The only one I found to be useful would be the damage up as by the time the player has started to master a level, the game is throwing so many enemies – also known as free lives – at the player that they don’t have to care about anything defensive at all. It certainly won’t help a player going to a new level, as it will only end up prolonging the inevitable death. Damage is also the most important stat to have, as if the player doesn’t take attack constantly, most bodies that aren’t heavy hitters start to deal menial amounts of damage that will end up requiring the player to sit around circling a normal enemy for a whole minute, which is neither satisfying nor rewarding.
What are my roguelite three Cs
I now get to the three Cs of a good Roguelite, and as someone who has found that rougelites are their favorite genre of game I can say that I think these three things are what establish a masterful and top tier roguelite game, whether that be through a mix or mastery of a single C.

Content
The first C is content, the it is the backbone of most roguelites as they are procedurally generated. Hyper Parasite is quite lacking in this department and I did get tired of constantly seeing the same bodies and the same rooms which made it feel repetitive. I got tired of playing the same level to unlock things to get to the next, as every run felt almost entirely the same. This is contrasted by a rougelite master of content “Enter the Gungeon” which has so many guns that there is always something new to look forward to in the next run.

Combos
Combos are important and can often change the game around in new and exciting ways. Currently there aren’t any real combos in the game so everything feels very static. The bodies inhabited never change, and neither do their stats or abilities. One way I would have loved to see the game enhance to main mechanic of taking over bodies would have been if they could be fused in the lab to get a new body. One such example could be the gang guy who throws a chain and the hobo who performs a light melee attack. Fuse them together and you have the gang hobo who pushes their cart forward with chains attached to it and then it comes back to them and the distance is based upon how long the player charged the attack. Sadly, once the player sees a particular body, they know exactly what to expect which adds to the repetitive nature of the game. A rougelite great for this would be the Binding of Isaac, also a personal favorite of mine.

Customization
This focuses on skill trees and making a run unique. It would have been fun to potentially unlock characters to take over every time but make them much cheaper and have skill trees that allowed some enemy bodies to do better than others. This might alleviate the issue of any body being good every run. The king of this style would be Tales of Maj’Eyal or ADOM.

The story is simple and only really explains why the events of the game is occurring, which is normal for a rougelite.

The sound design is all right but once again repetitive. The one aspect of the sound design I did enjoy however is the announcer. His boisterous and excited pronouncements at the amount of slaughter and carnage on the screen help to make it feel more interesting and provides a sense of power in the player’s actions.

The graphics are good, as every unique body is pretty easily distinguishable which helps to know what their power is from the start.

The game controls best on a controller.


Easy to Alt-Tab: Yes
No real bugs to speak of.

Nioh is a Dark Souls clone that adds some new elements that make the game better in most areas. I am unsure why, but the game seems to really suffer from a lack of balance and variety. The ARP equipment addition provides an extra bit of the looter genre to the game which is fun and makes fighting player spirits really fun. I also think the KI pulse should be a permanent addition to the genre as it provides for some last minute saves that feel extremely satisfying.

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Combat
Combat is the bread and butter of a Dark Souls game, which is why it is awesome that this game not only copies it well, but also adds some great new mechanics to the mix. The first big addition is that, if timed correctly, the player is able to refill their stamina gauge greatly with a KI pulse. This allows for some near miraculous last minute saves and some hair pulling errors that added a lot to the tension of combat and made it so that it felt more active. I didn’t have to wait around for stamina to regenerate and could instead spend most of that time doing something. The second big addition would be the inclusion of stances. Every weapon has three stances which are a low stance, a medium stance, and a high stance. The low stance can be useful as the attacks are very fast and can be immediately dodged out of its animation. The medium stance has a longer animation, but it does more damage and has a better ki pulse stamina return. High stance has a very short combo, long animations, and a mediocre return on stamina. These additions aren’t huge but they make fights dynamic and require less time wondering when one has enough stamina to pull off a combo.

Loot & Stats
Nioh continues to innovate with the randomized loot that can be gained by defeating enemies. This innovation does fall a bit flat though. It is really fun to find gear with a better bonus roll, but a lot of the gear becomes obsolete pretty early in the game. Then one is stuck with one weapon that one finds stronger versions of throughout the game. A player can also equip two weapons that can be swapped between with a short button combo. I didn’t find this especially useful though because I specialized in a single stat which made all other weapons useless. Stats can be increased the exact same way that it is done in Dark Souls. Killing enemies awards experience which can in turn be spent on a level up.

Enemies
Enemies are one of the biggest offenders in terms of a blandness. For the first two regions, I didn’t see a single new enemy. One or two are then introduced slowly for each region after, but it does detract a bit from the overall enjoyment of the game when the player pretty much knows how to fight every enemy before getting to them. Enemies do have a pretty good variety of moves which is one of the only reasons this didn’t detract more from gameplay. The environment also plays a part because some enemies are extremely easy in large fields, but become near instant death if encountered in a hallway.

Environments
Each region has a unique environment or two that provides new scenery. These environments are fun to fight enemies in, but they aren’t usually much to look at. There are a lot of repeating textures and buildings. These environments are also used in side content. The important pieces of geometry that a players comes to know well are cliffs and ladders as they signal shortcuts or instant death.

Bosses
Bosses are greatly imbalanced which was disappointing as they are the keystone to a good Dark Souls game. They are the final challenge that shows that a player has made progress. When I reached a boss in Nioh, I never knew if I would beat them in 3 seconds or 3 hours. This is because some bosses have really low health and damage for no reason like the Nue. Then the player has to later fight two bosses with really awful mechanics that frustrated me to no end. One fun thing about bosses was that they kept the same stats later on in the game so it was fun fighting them as an occasional special enemy.

Side Content
Side quests are pretty fun because it is more of the same in terms of missions. The player has to go find a big enemy and kill them. They provide rare materials and can add more story content. I would recommend that if someone is enjoying the game, then they should definitely play the side content.


The player character is named William, a British sailor who is bonded with a guardian spirit that revives him. His spirit gets stolen and must go to Japan to retrieve her while also getting involved in a brutal civil war. It is an okay story if not a bit hard to follow at times.

The sound design is a bit disappointing in the sound effect department. Weapons all have about 4 or 5 sounds each including the enemies that use the same weapons. While I was usually distracted away from this, it was quite egregious when I noticed it with enemies who had lots of health. The music is fitting and also pretty enjoyable music with traditional Japanese instruments like the Shamisen. I just wish there was more track variety.

The graphics look great, using a muted color palette for the environments to provide a dark theme full of tension. Enemies are colored quite well and enhance gameplay surprisingly well. Stealthy enemies wear black equipment and hide well in the shadows. I was surprised a fair amount of times by them which was a surprise. This is contrasted by big and tough enemies being colored with yellows, oranges, and reds to make them really stand out.

The game controls quite well and I never had any issues with it. I used a gamepad.


Easy to Alt-Tab: Yes
The game runs great on Windows and I only had 2 crashes while playing. As for Linux, make sure to use the Glorious Eggroll Proton to reduce the amount of crashes and movies don’t work.

Build variety is one of the places this game isn’t lacking, so if I wanted I could finish the DLC and then play with a completely new build focused on more of the unique weapons with their own skill lines.

PrCR: 3x

👍 Pros 👍
Fun Loot
Great new mechanics
Decent story



👎 Cons 👎
Lack of variety in everything
Poor boss balance

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Battlefield & Heroes
The battlefield is set up with three lanes and five spaces in each lane. This is mirrored in the Moon’s side of the board. Heroes are by default on the back space of each lane so that they can protect the player’s health and so they don’t die immediately. Each turn the player gets a single tick of energy which is shared between heroes. They can then use this energy to perform a unique power. These can be very powerful, and the more powerful it is the more energy it takes. The power to draw an extra card and get an extra point to play cards costs three energy whereas the power to reduce up to three random enemies attack to zero costs four energy. The most expensive power would be the field obliteration which the player character has. It destroys everything on the field, but it takes eight power. The heroes that are taken to the battlefield aren’t static though. There are four to choose from and they all come with different starting cards which allows for a decent amount of starting decks to choose from.

Adventures & Decks
The player’s deck is determined by its starting heroes initially. Once the player starts their adventure, they are able to acquire cubes which have three different cards inside of them. The player is able to do one reroll of the cards. The adventure map is comprised of nodes that the player can choose between depending upon the rewards given. Besides the extra cards, there are also upgrades for cards which can be collected, upgrades for the player’s heroes and upgrades for the player’s battle resources as well.

Upgrades
Every card in the game has two different upgrade paths that they can take that change and improve upon how the card works. One such example would be a shield generating unit which generates three points of shield in the lane it was played in can be upgraded so that it will either generate shields in the lane at the beginning of every turn as long as it is alive, or it will generate shields in all three lanes. These upgrades are integral to making sure that the payer can match the power curve of the moon. The player does have to focus on balancing the energy required to play a card, as some upgrades increase the overall cost of a unit which can make a deck lopsided in terms of its power curve. To help with this, the player is able to upgrade their battle resources. Some nodes will reward the player with an extra card in the starting hand and others can increase the amount of card playing power per turn. Finally, the heroes themselves can be upgraded which may directly improve the hero itself or it may improve the player’s resources. One upgrade for the heroes, known as Ultori, increase the hero’s health and moves it forward on the battle board which allows for better protection of a key support unit. An upgrade that indirectly helps would be that a hero upgrade provides are large amount of card upgrades immediately which can provide a large burst of deck power and help greatly if RNG isn’t providing upgrades itself.

Battles
Battles take place on a three tile high and ten tile wide grid. The fifteen grid spaces on the left are reserved for the player’s creatures and heroes while the right side is reserved for the enemy creatures and heroes. As mention before, every card has a cost associated with it, and the player will get five card playing power at the beginning of the battle. The reason that this is important to manage and get more of is because this pool of resources doesn’t increase naturally on its own. It is only through the use of cards that increase the power pool and overworld events is the player able to expand their resources which is a unique mechanic that I liked and really helped to sell the fact that humanity is on the brink of extinction and there aren’t a lot of resources to be wasting.

Unlocks
At the end of a run, the player gets some unlock points. At the beginning of the game the player’s pool of cards they can receive and upgrade into is quite limited. By spending an unlock point, the player is able to randomly unlock a new card from the pool. This is a fine way to unlock things, but I would have liked to pick which card to unlock. This does make it so that the player has to use cards they might not initially because it has the best upgrade in that particular run.

The story is quite unique. It is a twist on the dystopian apocalyptic genre where humans have created a sentient AI who is hellbent on destroying the last dregs of humanity. This itself isn’t unique, but the AI is stuck on the Moon and thus does its best to make due with the various tools it has available to it on Earth. This allows both sides in the story to feel like they are scraping by with the few resources they have. The humans are not doing well, but neither will the AI if the player is able to take out key targets that will cripple the Moon’s armies.

The sound design is great. The voice acting is quite good in the intro cinematic. The small bits of voice acting when the heroes act are also quite nice as they provide a sense of power behind actions and their death cries caused me sadness due their loss, but similar to the theme of the game’s themes, this was more due to the loss in battle strength than their actual demise.

The graphics are a stylized two-dimensional art style reminiscent of some comic books. The characters appear to then be animated using the two-dimensional bone method where the characters’ animations are made by subsequently moving the pieces one at a time in a separate program and then exporting it as an animation. It looks all right, but also a little stiff. The “cutscenes” between dialogue are well made and I greatly enjoyed the black and white style that did very well with its contrast to create a sense of power and pain.

The game can be controlled entirely with the mouse. There are keyboard hotkeys, but they aren’t needed which makes this a great game to enjoy in a console setting. The mouse controls can at times be a little difficult because they require a lot of dragging and dropping which can sometimes not be registered well causing the occasional error.


Easy to Alt-Tab: Yes
Game works fine, no bugs noticed

The game has permanent progression which unlocks new cards and their upgrades. In a vein similar to Slay the Spire, there always feels like a combo that hasn’t been tried yet. The game is a bit unfinished though and has more content on the way.
PrCR: 2x - Great

👍 Pros 👍
Great story
Fun gameplay


👎 Cons 👎
In an unfinished state

Dog Duty is an isometric real-time tactics game where the player must defeat three bosses to get to the final showdown. Unfortunately, the game is very short, with each boss only taking an hour to complete. The gameplay is sadly not good enough to make a game this short worth the $15 price tag.

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Overworld & Vehicles
The overworld is comprised of a small hub world that has three paths to three different islands which have a theme, though there is a lot of environmental overlap and the environment only changes gameplay in the swamp. In the swamp, there are areas that are filled with water that slow characters down which makes them easy targets. The overworld is pretty large, which is why the player’s mercenaries stand atop three different vehicle types which all drive almost exactly the same way, with the player clicking and holding in one place and the vehicle will drive towards the mouse cursor. One quality of life feature I would have liked to see would have been a minimap while driving. Due to the lack of a minimap, I found myself opening the full map a frustrating amount of times.

Combat & Stealth
Combat is the focus of this game, though it is a bit simplistic and not in a refined way. Each of the three mercenaries has a weapon that can be changed. They will automatically fire at any enemies within their range when they aren’t moving. It is for this reason that the stealth mechanics don’t really work. Enemies will notice player movement from a distance and they will investigate allowing for the player to bait enemies into ambushes, but it also would be great to get around enemies consider the lack of cover at the beginning of a lot of stages. The aforementioned mechanic where allies shoot immediately and automatically will cause enemies to go straight into combat instead of staying in the stealth mode. Once combat is initiated it becomes a clunky and boring ordeal. Besides automatically attacking, the player is able to use a few items such as molotovs, which helps to clear an area, though I didn’t find them very necessary. Each mercenary also has a special ability that is unlimited with a cooldown. The issue with this is that some mercenaries have abilities that are much better than the others. I never removed the healing character because he made the game more enjoyable as I was able to save my mercenaries that were grouped together. This wouldn’t be quite as necessary if there was more cover. By standing behind a wall of sandbags, damage to mercenaries and enemies behind this wall will be greatly reduced. Cover is so sparse for the player that I ended up forgetting about it most of the time. If a mercenaries health is reduced to nothing they get downed and can be picked up by an ally. There isn’t much of a penalty for this which surprised me as it is usually a big deal in this kind of game.

Combat on Vehicles
While driving vehicles there will occasionally be an opportunity to fight a vehicle battle. Vehicle battles are not very fun as they require a ton of micomanagement and there isn’t any cover on vehicles, even with the two objects every vehicle can have on top of it. Missiles slowly rain down from above which will deal fifty percent of any mercenary’s health instantly. There are other vehicles that will throw a time bomb that a single mercenary has to focus on disarming. Combine these two tasks with fighting without any cover against tanky enemies and one gets a less than fun mechanic that is thankfully optional unless the player wants the money, which is ultimately useless.

Items
There are a few different weapons to choose from, but I found that the sniper rifle is the most over powered of all of them. This is because it has surprisingly high attack speed while dealing a lot of damage and going through enemy cover completely. The consumable aren’t especially interesting and I repeatedly spent my money on Molotov Cocktails as they were near instant death against a group of enemies.

Enemies
Enemies are recycled throughout the three islands. There is the grunt, the sniper, a tanky guy, and a commander. Sometimes they have a different weapon in their hands, though they don’t require any new tactics.

Outpost capturing
Each of the levels, besides the boss battle one, will disable one particular part of the enemy’s operations on that particular island. A few examples would be that the player can raid the enemy’s armory to steal the armor and if the entire stage is cleared out then enemies lose their armor. I never felt the effects of this mechanic though as enemies always felt the same way. I even tried going straight to the boss level for the final level and it didn’t feel any more difficult.

Bosses
Bosses are a slog as all of them boil down to hiding behind the obvious piece of cover and then running out to attack the boss again.


The story is fun, the little bit of it that there is. There is a bit initially which is fun and parodies the story of a lot of action movies. There is then a huge story drought with minor story events only occurring whenever there is a boss fight.

The sound design is annoying due to the low amount of sound variety. The minigun weapon plays the same sound every time it shoots a bullet and enemies that see the player will often yell the same line causing a cacophony of layered sounds. One of the biggest offenders would be that the player’s mercenaries would sometimes play voice clips very loudly even though I had my sound down to twenty-five percent. This happened more than once and it hurt quite a bit.

The graphics are quite nice. The are a lower polygon style that reminds me of the original quake but with textures that help to give the game a bit of a pixel art look. There are a few graphical glitches such logs hit in the swamp changing lighting all of a sudden. There also isn’t much in the way of enemy graphical differences between the three island zones. The swamp zone is original, but the other two zones are recycled desert graphics.

The first issue I had with the controls would be that the select box bugs out a lot and gets stuck in box select mode which makes it impossible to maneuver all of the units quickly. It is also really hard to tell if a character is selected or night as the rings around them don’t change color or indicate it in any meaningful way.


Easy to Alt-Tab: Yes
I had two crashes during my time playing for no apparent reason.

I finished the game in four hours and it is $15 usd. Each boss takes about an hour to complete.
PrCR: 0.33x – Bad Value

👍 Pros 👍
Good graphics

👎 Cons 👎
Frustrating controls
Shallow Gameplay
Poor Sound Design

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Tutorial
At the beginning of the game there is a small tutorial, but it isn’t sufficient to explain a lot of the more complex mechanics in the game. There is too much left up to player to stumble through that will turn a lot of players off. One such example would be figuring out that there is a tab for production examples and that there is then another button that allows the diagram to be changed based upon the production line.

UI
The UI is my biggest complaint with this game. The two egregious aspects of the UI are the fact that so many features are buried under layers of menus. The second problem is that some menus have a button to quit out of it while others do not. The worst example of a feature being buried would be for station building. It is buried three menus deep which makes it hard to find and caused me to use the pre-built ones which were often inefficient. The two menus that couldn’t be quit out of without using the escape key were the research screen and the galaxy map screen. I wish there was a button to close out of them instead of having to press the escape key which I did rarely and would mess with my train of thought when I was trying to think of how to best automate something.

Ship Building
Ship building is one of most important features in the game. Ship building isn’t explained well, but it works like this. The player must place down a ship core which can then be built around. To get walls the player must use blocks three deep. A hatch with robots requires walls to be two high so that they can be built on top of them. One deep walls are nice for interiors so that the player know what is usable space. There are a few machines or weapons to add onto the ships which will determine what it will do when automated. One important piece of machinery would be the construction bots. My gripe with the robots would be that there can only be eight per ship. I would love a piece of research that allows for much larger groups of robots for huge construction ships. Once a ship is designed and saved, it can be a pain to find. The design viewer has a left and right arrow that must be used to scroll between the different ships that can be built. I would much rather have a list view that I can quickly scroll through.

Station Building
Once the station build button is found, it allows the player to create the hull of the station which is very similar to building a ship. Stations can’t move though and can hold the factories that the player will use to produce a variety of goods. Station building is fun and can lead to some crazy designs to maximize efficiency. I wish it were easier to delete blocks when building because dragging robots onto the tasks one by one is a test of patience. I often found myself building the pre-made factories because it was such a chore to build them by hand.

Resources & Galaxy Map
Resources are found on planets and asteroids in the vast expanse of space. Each resource filled planet has four nodes with different resources of various degrees of quality. The quality is what effects how quickly resources can be mined from a particular source. Asteroids are pockets of metals in space which are great for the early game. I would love to have the option to destroy an asteroid completely near the mid-game as they take valuable station space.

Production Lines & Automation
Production lines are important because they take a useless metal and can turn it into a complex electronic or a super strong alloy. To accomplish this task, the player must have a variety of ships that can mine and then transport the items to the station factories. The distance between resource nodes and the factories is important. While teleportation is near instantaneous, the further away a node is the longer it will take. It will also raise the cost of transportation, which is paid in energy. Energy is initially bought from Earth, but it can later be produced. It is quite the feat to produce enough energy which creates a soft cap on player expansion. Automating production lines is really easy though. By right-clicking a ship and automating it to a specific role, it will do its best to perform its job. It does feel like the ships aren’t always automating properly as I found some ships sitting in asteroid space when there were jobs to be done.

Research
Research is important as it allows the player to boost efficiency and build new types of resources. Research is a level-based system where every action in the game performed by the player or their automated ships provide experience. Levels require exponentially more experience each time, though it was steady as I progressed further into the tech tree.

Combat
Combat is frustrating as it requires the player to aim and fire the weapons while the computer will fire automatically. I would like weapons to be automated as the player having to control each individually goes against the automation nature of the game.

Missions & Money
Planets will ask for certain resources, with Earth providing the easiest contracts. These provide money which can be used to pay Earth to build something for the player. Money was much too easy to get and became pointless mid-game.


There is a minor story snippet that humans need to expand into space but found that they were not suited for colonization so they left it up to a fleet of robots to prepare planets for settlement.

The music isn’t exceptional and I turned it off relatively early. The sounds are nice and fit the sci-fi theme. I specifically enjoyed the teleportation sound of ships as it didn’t get tiring to listen to and was great auditory feedback for when ships were appearing or leaving one of the player’s stations.

The graphics are three-dimensional but the camera is set as if the player were looking straight down into ships without tops. This makes them seem like toys, which is a good feeling to get considering ships are expendable and will get destroyed as the player is able to produce better ships with stronger parts.

The controls are the main frustration for Final Upgrade. To build a station the player has to drill down two menus to find the option. Disassembling things is also unnecessarily annoying, as the construction bots don’t automatically destroy like they build, so the player has to drag them onto the task every time which wastes a lot of time.


Easy to Alt-Tab: Yes
The game ran fine for me.

The game currently has only one map, but a procedural map system is on the way.
PrCR:2.25x – Amazing Value

👍 Pros 👍
Enjoyable to set up production lines
Fun to build in when it works

👎 Cons 👎
Terrible UI
Poor combat

A strong entry in the FPS genre and the roguelike genre. Guns are all unique and are a joy to use. Main abilities are fun, perks are diverse, and the movement system is one of the best in all of the first-person games I have played.

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Guns & Gunplay
Any FPS that attempts to be fun has to have good gunplay and interesting guns. I am happy to report that Roboquest does very well in both areas and impressed me with it solid foundation that is just waiting for more content. The guns are currently a bit static as they don’t have many affixes, but this will be addressed in later updates further into Early Access. Guns themselves have a lot of personality in that they all fire with a unique spread and bullet dispersion mechanism. Some of the most memorable guns have an alternate fire, and many weapons are inspired by famous old-school guns found in a variety of games. One example would be the unreal gun which fires an orb as its alternate fire and this orb can subsequently explode when shot by the instant beam found as the primary fire. It was also nice that sniper rifles didn’t have any reticle when equipped which makes the scope important to accurately aim. This doesn’t mean it can’t be used up close, but it makes it much harder and helps to make sniper types of weapons feel more specialized. The tight controls help make the guns really shine as missing a shot never felt like the game’s fault. Every weapon also has one or two types which helps to increase gun damage alongside enemy health increases.

Cores
Cores are one of the ways that the player progresses as they play through a run. Every core improves two of the five stats which are the four weapon types and an improvement for the class’ ability. These cores help to create decisions as a favorite weapon getting stronger may require that the player pick up a core with a less useful secondary core attribute.

Classes
The guardian is the first class unlocked and plays similarly to other FPS games. The special ability that the class has is a homing grenade which does a decent amount of damage. The special melee attack this class has focuses on stunning enemies by bashing the enemies with a punch. The second class is recon which plays a bit differently. The ability for recon allows the player to mark any enemy. This will in turn cause them to take all damage as critical hits and makes the cells home onto the player. The melee of this class is a knife that does a decent amount of damage. Abilities require “cells” to be used once again which makes the marking ability amazing for constant use. Classes aren’t especially different, but provide a refreshing experience as they play differently.

Perks
Perks in this game can be chosen when the player levels up. This happens when enough cells are collected. Cells have the dual purpose of refreshing the player’s ability while also serving as experience. Perks are quite varied and synergize well with weapons. One such example would be getting the perk that makes critical hits bounce to a second target for fifty percent damage when using the recon class. This is because marking a target makes every shot a critical, so if the mark is applied to an enemy with high health, all smaller enemies will be easily decimated. Perks also can change how the player’s special ability works. One combo I enjoyed was the perk that makes the mark ability deal damage over time while also using the perk that bounces the mark to a new enemy nearby if the original target dies.

Movement
Movement is the best part of this game. Jumping is so smooth and has the perfect amount of gravity to make it not feel floaty while also still feeling like it can be effected so that airborne maneuvers can be achieved. The game only gets better after rails are introduced regularly and the enemy hop is unlocked. Rails allow for quick traversal above enemies and obstacles and the speed is faster than running which provides a speedier option that is disadvantageous due to its fixed path. Enemy hopping stuns enemies but also allows for a great vertical traversal option which is like a weaker rocket jump. I hope more movement options are added as it is so fun and feels amazing.

Enemies
Enemies are killer robots with a surprising amount of variety. The game feels more like a bullet hell because of how the slowly early game enemies shoot. This is contrasted by turrets who don’t have the ability to move around. Familiar enemies get new ways to kill the player further on which requires the player stay on their toes.

Progression
A base camp is upgraded every run with wrenches earned in a run. This allows for permanent ability improvements which are important to gameplay in later stages.

The story is relayed in a comicbook styling, though it isn’t a major aspect of the game. It appears that there is an overarching story that provides a greater context for the player’s actions and explains why there are killer robots and only one human in the game.

The sound is phenomenal due to its crisp and satisfying sound and amazing music. All of the guns have their own unique sounds the perfectly relays the power behind every shot. The music is a mix of techno and rock that is so enchanting and helped me stay invested in the action.

The game uses a cel-shaded graphical style that is quite pleasant and helps to make the enemies pop against the sometimes monochromatic stage walls. The style reminds me greatly of Gearbox’s Borderlands style except without the chunky black lines. Bosses are introduced with a slow-motion cutscene with their name displayed prominently which is another way its styled a bit off of Borderlands. Guns all look really nice and the particles attached to the bullets look really dangerous and colorful. The animated comic book pages that are the cutscenes are detailed in such a way that the panels could be printed out and they would still make sense but the animation adds more character to the already interesting panels. It is really neat how the comic book styling continues into the game as the sound effects show up as words on the screen.

The game controls really well and I never felt that a missed jump was the game’s fault. The head jump and grinding is forgiving and satisfying to pull off and are easy to pull off as they simply require the player to fall onto them.


Easy to Alt-Tab: Yes
The game runs really well and I never noticed any bugs.

The game’s progression ends after three hours. A roguelike doesn’t technically ever end, but it is nice to have a goal.
PrCR: 0.15x – Horrible Value

👍 Pros 👍
Great gameplay
Interesting guns
Amazing music

👎 Cons 👎
Low amount of progression

A twinstick shooter roguelike reminiscent of Binding of Isaac while also including some of the puzzle elements from Zelda. All of the pieces of this game create an atmosphere of exploration and mystery that provided a ton of excitement.

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Hub world
The first time the player starts the game, they will be dropped into an empty hub world that doesn’t have much in it besides the wizard who is the one who wanted someone to check out the mines due to earthquakes and something he has lost. While initially devoid of life, the hub world soon becomes lively as soon as the player begins to rescue the NPCs trapped in the mines; often due to the wizard as well. All of the NPCs, except for the pets, have a purpose and are designed to help make the player more powerful with every subsequent run. It is fun to watch a former ghost town become full of life ready to assist the player, though for a price.

Combat
Combat is the main gameplay loot for Undermine. The player has a few ways to attack. The first way is by performing a melee swing with the pickaxe which has decently high damage while also providing minor knockback against enemies which is perfect when defending against melee focused opponents. The second way to attack is by throwing the pickaxe like a boomerang. This attack is ranged, but does less damage and leaves the player vulnerable as they can’t attack without their weapon. Bombs are a last resort tool for attacking as they have a lot of utility, but they are also devastating forces of destruction with proper placement. Their main issue is that they are limited in uses and are not always easy to find. Combat stays interesting due to the large variety of enemies. Even ten hours into the game I found that I would find an enemy that wasn’t previously seen in one of my runs. Early enemies are focused on melee attacks, but more powerful enemies often focus on ranged attacks with multiple bullets creating a bullet hell style of gameplay. There are some enemies that are reskins of enemies found early on, but the new enemies have new attack patterns so I didn’t mind as much. They are also much more the exception than the rule. Finally, the player is able to dodge similar to the one found in souls-like games. The main issue is that it is instead a jump which doesn’t fit well with the two-dimensional play space. The shadow isn’t noticeable enough and can make it difficult to know exactly where the player is going to land.

Items
The best way to improve the player’s randomized character each run is by picking up the relics available every level. The items, known as relics, provide passive abilities to the player in a variety of ways. One such example would be the glaive relic which makes the pickaxe huge when thrown which makes it very easy to hit whichever target is closest to the player. These effects can be combined though, which creates some very fun combinations that can absolutely destroy enemies. An example of a combo would be the glaive along with the triple throw. This will allow the player to throw three giant pickaxes in a cone formation. Some relics are unique and don’t play well with other unique relics. This is usually due to the fact that they are quite powerful. Two examples that I liked would be the aforementioned triple throw which has the potential to triple to player’s thrown damage and makes the ranged attack more effective as a shotgun and the golden bomb, which turns rocks that are bombed out into useful gold.

Secrets
Secret rooms are easy to find as the wall has a small sparkle effect on it. Secret rooms will sometimes be treasure rooms, but it can also be a small puzzle that is solved using visual clues. It keeps the secret rooms interesting, but they are a bit annoying when the puzzle requires bombs or keys that the player doesn't have. There are also secret rooms hidden under rocks. A great way to find these secrets is by using a rock breaking enemy to open them up for free.

Bosses
Every set of levels has an end boss which is a difficult test of skill that has a powerful gimmick. Once the bosses are defeated, the player gets a boss key and they can continue to the next set of levels. Once a boss key is used, the player doesn’t have to get another, the doors to the next set of levels will simply be open. I also like how the player obtains the blueprint to a relic that allows the player to use the boss’ gimmick for themselves.

Progression
Progression is cumulative and every upgrade bought is inherited by the future peasant after death. The upgrades are necessary to beat stronger levels and the player is able to gain some upgrades besides damage once the appropriate NPC is unlocked in the hub world. The main aspect of the progression I dislike would be that when the player forges a new relic from a blueprint, they are given the relic. Subsequently crafted relics are taken away by a pilfer, so the player is only able to have the first one. This is only a one time thing though, which makes it feel like one might be gimping a future run by unlocking a cool new relic early game.

Not much story in this roguelike. The player is one of an army of peasants that make a contract with a wizard to mine for riches.

The music is quite good and doesn't get in the way of the gameplay. It instead adds a layer of ambiance that can be tuned out when in an intense battle. The sound design is great an provides a lot of auditory feedback to the player. This is done through hit sounds and unique sound effects for certain enemy abilities.

The game uses a pixel art style that has a lot of pixels that provides a smooth look with jagged edges. The graphics do a great job at relaying that there may be secrets or what a monster may do. One such example is the purple braziers will provide items if blown up, but also curse the player. This purple is consistent with curses which allows players to know when they should avoid things. The aspect of this game that is frustrating is that some enemies will jump which uses higher z-levels. Considering this game is two-dimensional, it can be very hard to judge where they are going to land.

The controls work quite well using a controller. All of the buttons were easy to reach and were well laid out. The twinstick controls are easy to access while not taking away from the melee aspect of the game.


Easy to Alt-Tab: Yes
I didn’t experience any bugs.

I had seen a decent amount of the content, especially the items and enemies, but there were always new secrets that would appear and would surprise me.
PrCR: 1.5x – Great Value

👍 Pros 👍
Beautiful graphics
Lots of secrets
Crazy item combos

👎 Cons 👎
Annoying dodge ability

A mediocre shooter plagued with bad design decisions.

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Weapons & Upgrades
Weapons found are pretty standard except for a few. There are pistols, automatic rifles, and SMGs. They have great impact and do a decent amount of damage. The best weapon would be the laser rifle that will instantly kill enemies who are weaker and will only have to shoot a few more times to fell more powerful enemies. During my playthrough I ended up not using the laser rifle due to it not having a lot of ammo which was quite scarce and the fact that there is a sizable delay between shots which can leave the player quite open. Heavy weapons are very fun and satisfying and I am glad there are so many available. The three types are a laser that melts cover and enemies with equal ease. The gatling gun shotgun was my favorite as it shredded enemies and created the best effects in terms of gore. The flamethrower is also effective, though it is less satisfying because it simply shoot a flame bullet that spreads into fire upon impact. While the heavy weapons are already powerful, the normal weapons in the game can be improved which is available in the form of upgrade kits. There are basic upgrades like larger clips which are still quite useful, but I enjoyed the unique upgrade that every weapon has. One such example would be the SMGs can be turned into nail guns that greatly increase damage but decrease bullet speed. The gun feels like a different gun and provides a sense of character to the guns.

Level Design
Sadly, the level design does not do the gunplay justice. Levels are generic looking mazes that loop into each other. I had to use the hint system more than I would have liked simply because I was unable to figure out how to get to the next section. The levels are also quite frustrating because they allow for enemies to shoot the player in the back all the time. There isn’t ever a safe bit of cover in the game because there will always be an enemy spawn point in the player’s blind spot. This creates a frustrating experience where the player has to memorize the spawn sequence so they don’t get surprised by an enemy. These same enemies are also sharpshooters and easily hit the player on huge maps no matter what difficulty the player is on.

Enemies & Variety
Enemy variety is quite bland and new enemies are introduced too far into the game. Ninety percent of the game will be spent shooting Nazi grunts with all of the same guns the player has. It just feels like cannon fodder and that the Nazis are still not taking the protagonist seriously despite being plagued with his presence for the last couple of years. There are also some large, automaton styled enemies with heavy weapons, but the strategy to beat them is to simply shoot them more. Drones are difficult to shoot but aren’t greatly annoying as they don’t do a lot of damage. Robo-Nazis are fun, but they are only in the last third and their gimmick is that they dodge the first shot at them. This isn’t that big of a deal against the player’s weaponry with high round counts that have only been upgraded at this point. There is an upgraded version of them extremely later on which are a real threat, but there are only two of them and they are never seen again. Finally, the captains get alerted by shooting and will nearly infinitely spawn enemies until they are found. Sometimes these captains are intentionally hidden further along the level which makes stealth feel like a waste of time.

Perks
Depending upon the player’s playstyle, certain perks will level up. These provide minor stat bonuses that are forgettable and don’t provide any meaningful gameplay difference.

Stealth
Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus continues using the stealth component of its predecessor. The stealth isn’t good in this game. Enemies detect the player quite easily with the slightest movement. The game is also seemingly designed for stealth and not designed for stealth. What I mean by this is that early on captains will be relatively easy to access with proper stealth. Later on, they are hidden to make it impossible to kill the captains first so that they aren’t alterted which feels mean-spirited.

The game is the direct sequel of the first game in the Wolfenstein reboot series and it provides a great recap cinematic for any player who hasn’t played the previous game before. The story is great for the first half. The protagonist is a demon of a man who has become broken and is trying to keep himself together so that everyone can rally behind him. His inner turmoil and the inner thoughts provided to the player are emotionally evoking and help to create a complex character that isn’t sure where he belongs any more. The second half of the story throws out all of this character development and turns the protagonist into a generic first person shooter protagonist who is so overpowered he couldn’t ever be stopped. The most egregious example of this when all of the characters stop being themselves and throw a birthday party on the eve of the most important mission they have ever had. The final boss isn’t even a hard fought battle, it is simply a cutscene.

The sound design is great for the most part. Weapons have a lot of weight behind them and the voice acting sells the emotional conflict of the protagonist. The music is a bit strange in that sometimes it will play and other times it will be silent at the most inopportune times. Some of the metal core songs also don’t fit the theme of a dystopian, sci-fi, alternative history.

The models for the game are quite nice at high graphics levels and are a joy to look at. The problem is the texture quality. They are quite low quality and the contrast between the models and the textures makes it look quite ugly. They look stretched and ill-fitted. I checked the settings multiple times, but every time it told me that I had the highest graphical settings.

The game controls awkwardly. It uses the typical wasd style of movement, but then it requires holding the alt key to lean which makes hand contortion an issue. The player is unable to move as well while leaning which is annoying is a feature I almost never used. It is also difficult to choose which weapons to dual wield as there isn’t any indicator as to which can and can’t be dual-wielded.


Easy to Alt-Tab: Yes
No bugs were experienced during my time playing the game.

The story ends after about ten hours. This is an awful value for the forty dollar price tag.
PrCR: 0.25x – Awful Value

👍 Pros 👍
Interesting first half the of story

👎 Cons 👎
Poor Level Design
Poor value
Awful second half of the story

Assembly Planter is an enjoyable and cheap entry into the automation genre that is perfect for any fans of the genre. Conveyors are all here, but they way resources are generated puts an interesting spin on the genre to create something that feels unique.

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Resources & Plants
At the beginning of the game, the player starts off with a hoe, a blade, and a few plant seeds. Seeds can only be planted in soil that had been hoed out, removing the grass. Once the grass is gone and the seeds are planted, it will take five seconds and the plants that were sown will pop to adulthood. They can then be harvested by the blade. This is a little tedious, but it is the basis of the early game and is the main reasoning behind wanting to automate the process. This same process progresses into the mid-game, where more resources are required. Every resource has to be grown, though it isn’t too hard to replant. Soil only needs to be hoed once and then plants can simply be regrown there endlessly. The player is able to click and hold to replant endlessly on the soil and it works the same way for the blade when it comes to harvesting. There are upgrades to the blade later on that helps as when it is used it has a cooldown before it can be used again.

Crafting
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2187786212
Crafting is quite simple and it is done at one of the few crafting tables that the player gets access to later on with more resources. Crafting is time based and large orders of objects will take quite a while. That is why automation is so important, because it becomes inefficient to craft objects by hand after a while. There are a few things that can’t be crafted at the crafting table.

Compost & Sieving
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2187787396
Dirt can be gained not by crafting, but an endless supply is available by using the hoe on the ground infinitely. This isn’t very efficient, so the player soon gets access to compost pots which take the biomass gained from early plants and turns it into soil at an efficient rate which reduces the amount of manual labor the player has to do early on. Plant seeds also can’t be crafted, which is why the sieves are so important. By sieving dirt in one of the sieves of various qualities, different seeds will pop out. This is how higher tier seeds are created as well which are very important as they are required to create the automated machines that will allow player to focus instead on increased efficiency instead of doing everything by hand.

Automation
Automation is similar to other automation based games. There are harvesters and planters which will plant the seeds a player has and then send the materials on their way on conveyor belts. One machine can lead to another machine, but the main way to move resources around requires the hub. A central hub will spit the finished resources that have been collected on the conveyor belts into the player’s inventory. It is unique and an interesting concept that I haven’t seen explored in other automation games. What I dislike is how the items then come out of the player’s inventory. This requires a machine called a puller, which will take a specified amount of resources each second and insert it into the attached machine. My difficulty was that I was unable to get all of my machines to share the resources. Due to the fact that machines have an inner inventory that can hold a stack of resources that is quite large and some pullers seem to have priority over others as some of my machines would starve while others were nearly full. I was also saddened that there wasn’t any way early game to get the resources from a conveyor belt into a machine.

Shrinking Machine
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2187786592
Once a player has reached a high enough tier, they are able to unlock the shrinking machine play area. This allows a player to take a certain amount of play area and turn it into a single machine. This is first accomplished by unlocking the barn with a key recipe found in the tutorial book. The player must then have a shrinking block that will be required to make a one block machine. The player may then create as many of these specialized one block machines as they want as long as they have the required resources. I do wish there was a way to look inside of a completed machine as I forgot what I had put into some of my earliest designs and wanted to analyze them for an improved version. I also found that the shrinking machine produces errors sometimes but doesn’t give a reason as to why it isn’t happy with a design.

Transmutation
The late game way to generate resources. Transmuting resources skips a majority of the planting steps and goes straight to turning some resources into others. This is the best way to get massive amounts of copper and iron as well as a sizable source of gold.

Automation games don’t usually have a story and this game is no exception

The sound effects in this game are nice. They don’t layer over one another and there is a satisfying cutting sound that occurs whenever the player uses their sword to collect resources from a plant. The music, however, is extremely repetitive and I was unable to listen to it for very long.

The graphics are three-dimensional models. The lighting on these models looks quite good with the graphics on high. The models themselves look a bit rough, especially the iron plant.

The game controls well with a keyboard and mouse. I liked that the inventory bar infinitely elongated, but I do wish it was easier to move around an item’s place in the order. Controls are smooth and I never had any issues with them. There also is a satisfying control scheme to plant and pick up resources.


Easy to Alt-Tab: Yes
The game is a bit buggy at the moment. There were times when I was unable to do anything and had to save and restart my game. This only really happened in the early game. The shrinking machine also has trouble identifying outputs which causes difficulty while using it. Finally, I really wish the options menu was located in the game menu instead of inside the tutorial book as I found myself taking the book off my hotbar and then I had to read it to change a key later on.

The game has a pretty good return on value due to its cheap price. More time could be spent automating, but the shrinking machine doesn’t seem to always work. The replayability is rather low though as the game doesn’t change in any way if it is played again.

PrCR: 1x – Good Value

👍 Pros 👍
A fun entry into the automation genre
Shrinking mechanic is fun

👎 Cons 👎
Repetitive Music

Necronator: Dead Wrong is an interesting premise let down by being released too early. The RPG card battler genre fused with an autobattler is a fun mix, but there isn’t enough content to justify the game’s price. Everything is quite repetitive and the AI eventually devolves into a spam fest instead of using tactics.

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Commanders
Before a run is started, the player is able to choose from the two currently available commanders which each focus on a different theme. The first general is an undead knight that focuses on buffing units in her hand until even the weakest unit becomes a formidable opponent. The second commander is an undead puppet master who changes the game up a bit by having cards that are essentially towers. This in turn makes Necronator feel more like a traditional tower defense game. In my experience with both of these characters, the undead knight is quite a bit more powerful than the puppet master. This is because the knight is able to make weak units strong for relatively low mana costs. The puppet master’s puppets are strong, especially due to the fact that they can be summoned anywhere around an allied building, but the towers she summons are much too expensive for the their hitpoint pool and relative damage. Especially the Teddy Bear card that takes eighty mana for a unit that is not much stronger than a soldier skeleton.

Overworld
The overworld is quite similar to the one found in other RPG card battlers in that there are branching paths that can be planned and have differing purposes. The most common are battles, but stores dot the map as do resting spots that provide health, card upgrades, or card removal. Shops require gold and allow for one card to be removed for a cost.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2186750183

Units
Units are summoned using mana that is accumulated over time. Units are mainly undead or demons in appearance and they have health, attack, armor, and movement speed stats. The main issue that I have with the units is that there are only eight kinds of units and they are all pretty similar except for an ability. These abilities aren’t very unique either as other units can often gain these abilities with an upgrade. There are some unique upgrades that I would love to see more of and did make units unique, though they are pretty rare. The best upgrades were for the healer unit. The player could get an attack speed aura, increase the healing aura it emitted, or a rare upgrade was to spawn three weak, albeit, free units every fifteen seconds.

Enemies & AI
Enemy units have the same issue that player units have in that there is very little variety. Enemy units usually come in five or six varieties and have additional abilities applied to them based upon how hard the battle is, such as an elite battle. Enemies also don’t seem to cost the AI any mana, unlike the player. This makes it so that the AI’s strategy late game is to simply spam an ungoldy amount of units that are quite difficult to beat. The main way to defeat the AI in the early game is by focusing on cheap units with armor breaker. These will rip through the strong enemy units that it spawns as a challenge. The late game strategy is to get lots of units with Area of Effect attacks. The main issue I had with this is that the units with Area of Effect attacks are quite expensive in terms of mana which makes it difficult to compete against the legions of enemy units that run at the player.

Artifacts
An interesting concept this game employs is that both the player as well as the AI gets artifacts. The main issue I found is that there are a good amount of player artifacts that are useless, while the AI has a ton of really strong artifacts. Two of the useless artifacts I received were coupons that made cards at the shop cheaper which wasn’t an issue due to money being really easy to obtain. The second artifact would summon nine powerful units, but only if the player played six of each card type, which was not realistic at all. Some artifacts such as enchanted pillar which provides more mana are almost required for a good run. Enemy artifacts are powerful as they often punish the player’s deck with useless cards.

Battle & Status Effects
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2186750505
Battles are fought on a three-dimensional map that has a certain path that units follow. Later maps have additional paths that can be chosen between by the player by modifying the direction a sign is facing. Battle is rather zen, but gets annoying later on in a run. This is because there are small villages that provide extra control and start out under enemy control. Late game, if the player does not get these villages in about a minute and a half, they have lost.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2186750884

Map Variety
Battle maps don’t have a lot of variety and are simply reskins. This feels lazy and unpolished.


There is a minor story, but it isn’t interesting. The player has a summoning crystal fused to them and they have to find the great Necronator. The traveling companion to the player’s chosen commander is a cute bat character named Chubat.

The sound design isn’t especially good in Necronator. The music gets quite repetitive very quickly, so much so that I turned it off withing the first ten minutes I played the game. The sounds can also get cacophonous as many units attacking each other all making attacking sounds playing over each other does not sound enjoyable at high to moderate volume levels.

The graphics are the best part of the game. The game is three-dimensional in nature, but the textures are styled after pixel art which creates a diorama feeling. This is further compounded by the fact that all of the units in the game are pixel art sprites.

The controls are quite frustrating to deal which is surprising considering keyboard and mouse is rather accurate. When trying to pan using the left mouse button, sometimes it doesn’t work when the player accidentally mouses over their hand full of cards. The game also feels too much like a mobile port. To move the camera without accessing the camera menu, the player must swipe left or right with the mouse while hold the right mouse button.


Easy to Alt-Tab: Yes
The game feels pretty buggy, especially with the pathfinding AI. This AI never seems to know where to go and gets stuck rather frequently.

After about 5 hours I felt like I had already seen everything. Due to this, the twenty USD price tag is too high to justify the amount the amount of content in it.

PrCR: 0.25x – Bad Value

👍 Pros 👍
Beautiful graphics

👎 Cons 👎
Low enemy variety
Few units to use
Repetitive gameplay