Yes I did get an early preview for free but I liked it so much I bought another copy as a gift for my son.

Excellent indie game! As a big Slay The Spire fan, this sort of thing is right up my alley. It's got some interesting mechanics that are totally new to me, and lots of replayability. The humor is great, particularly if you're familiar with the game dev world.

I'm not particularly good at StS type games, but the difficulty on this one seems just right.... it is challenging to me, but not so much that I get overly frustrated.

A very worthwhile title!

I really wish Steam had a “maybe recommend” option for games. This review is for version 1.3.

For starters, I want to give credit to Cognoggin for making a game I would be willing to buy on early access (since I usually never do anymore). I remember the demo being both amusing and well put together. After playing for 9 hours and beating the game once, I can see several areas that need improvement. Still this game deserves some praise.

For starters, the game excellently captures the essence of Earthbound. The backgrounds are psychedelic, the music is catchy, and the enemy sprites all feel retro. The games humor is also a hilarious satire of both the gaming industry and the corporate world. The player characters all feel distinct in their play styles.

So, why do I say this game is a “maybe?” I will sum it up like this: for a rougelite, it can be frustratingly random while simultaneously being frustratingly monotonous. I know that sounds contradictory, so I will explain more below.

The game can be extremely random with what it generates. Though you can learn skills after a battle, they come with no rhyme or reason. This becomes a problem when you have a skills that synergize with other ones that you can never get. The ability that increases the damage from a burn status effect does little if none of your skills apply burn. You can pick a skill you think will be great early on never to see a skill to pair with it. Both the shop/talent inventories are randomized in their selections and their item prices. That means if you visit the same shop in one run, that talent you once passed on is now too expensive (assuming it is there to buy again in the first place). Since some talents (ex:+1 energy) are objectively better than more situational ones (ex: +1 to burn effects), a run’s difficulty can be decided entirely by how generous the RNG is with the player.

On the other side of the coin, many of the enemies use the exact same attack patterns. Bosses are especially guilty of this. This can again be frustrating when the enemy has an alternating pattern of buff/attack. If a person doesn’t have the right skills for some of these encounters, the game is pretty much over from that point. Bosses also have a gargantuan amount of HP, making battles drag on. Some enemies also have attacks that eat your sanity, and it is easy for your sanity stat to drop considerably. A low sanity causes multiple negative effects which in turn makes things more difficult. Sanity loss really needs to be toned down.

On that same token, the game is unbalanced and can rely on cheesing. For example. one of the upgrades for my block put thorns damage on my character. The last boss’s pattern required me to constantly be blocking, which in turn caused me to have around 50 thorns. The boss killed himself hitting me. It was anticlimactic but satisfying considering the last boss only had 3-4 attacks and 999 HP.

And if someone were to say this isn’t my type of game, I have enjoyed ADOM, World of Horror, Cataclysm DDA, Dwarf Fortress, and other rougelites. While each of the above games can also be incredibly cheap at times, each has their own way to mitigate randomness and make it more fair.

One final observation: while the sprites are all well done, there are a lot of models that are slightly altered. Notable examples include the slimes, the neckbeards, and even the elf/streamer. While triple A games are also guilty of this, it becomes more noticeable with how short the game is.

I am willing to believe the game will iron out most of these wrinkles with time, but for now I strongly recommend people try the demo first.

I received the game for free as part of the developer's efforts to get early feedback on pre-Early Access builds. As such, this review will be focused on early versions rather than Early Access builds - I'll update this review once enough content has been changed/added to get me to play again.

Good: Developer is receptive to feedback, particularly on Discord. The core mechanics are well implemented, even if I'm not a fan of all of them (Timed Hits and slowly decaying HP on damage reward timing and speed respectively, things not normally present in a turn-based deckbuilder.) I happen to like the art style, and there are some accessibility options to tone down visual effects that may cause motion sickness. There's three difficulty settings, though given the casual-leaning state of the current builds, I imagine most players are happy to play on the default easiest one.

Meh: Content and Balance are my two biggest concerns entering Early Access. Once you've done a few runs, you've seen about everything that can show up, and some things such as the boss of each floor are constant every run. Likewise, while there is some build variety (decks/passives/character choice), if you're playing in a min/max style the game tends to revolve around having only a 4-6 card deck (you start with 6 and may have chances to remove a card) and focusing hard on a 1-2 card combo combined with tools to survive and maybe a tech card to handle encounters that your main combo can't - there's a particular Floor 3 encounter that shuts out certain builds if you happen to find it. Balance between most cards is reasonable, but there's around half a dozen or so cards that can serve as a solo wincon if you happen to build around them. A combination of nerfing most of those and bringing up most of the other cards is needed long term, at least for competitive players like myself who only play the hardest setting. Additionally, there's usually little thought that goes into pathing your way through each floor - there's usually a clear best choice to make once you have a little experience playing.

Bad: Its the start of Early Access and I don't see anything damning enough to complain about here.

Overall: Recommended for beginner to intermediate players who don't mind waiting for additional content once they've played the ~5-15 hours worth currently on offer, particularly at the launch discount. If you're more experienced, such as a high Ascension Slay the Spire/Monster Train/Vault of the Void/etc player, wait for more content as you're likely to burn through what's here fast.

It's a roguelite with character but most of all THEY MADE A SLAY THE SPIRE - EARTHBOUND

meaty thighs

Very fun game loop and humor. If you are a fan of slay the spire and love 90s and 00s nostalgia, you should pick up this game.

Do yourself a favor: buy this game and enjoy the hot steamy sauna with Gabe.

The game has a bunch of fun mechanics, but the rng can mess you up much more than in similar games, which makes it hard to enjoy the game. The rethink mechanic reduces the rng a bit, but since it's rng too it doesn't do a very good job of it.

Its an amazing game with an even more amazing dev team, (Two people that are married) Loved playing this game and I would recomend it to anyone else.

Earth Bound meets Slay the Spire in a highly unique combative health system that allows for very varied builds. The skill based mechanics supplanted into the game also help to compensate for the downsides of turn based combat meaning reflexes aren't totally useless here. It is a great game, worth your money, and desperately needs more content.