Gatekeeper commits the greatest sin of all roguelikes, it does not change from run to run. Every run is the exact same and the upgrades you pick up are marginal, almost completely invisible changes to damage or other systems, that don't meaningfully affect the gameplay or fail to add strategy or alternative playstyles. Just shoot and use your alternate fire constantly. This is just boring.

This game takes the opposite approach, it feels like it has the evolution of an MMO or hardcore looter shooter where the further you progress the slower your progress, upgrades increase each time you get them, and many of them become less powerful after the first. Item instances. This is an acceptable decision if the progression actually means something, permanent or metaprogression MAY have this kind of slowing power curve, the temporary power a player has in an individual run should not. Not only does this make the player feel less rewarded for sticking around for longer periods of time, but it also makes it harder to specialize in specific aspects of the set. It kills replayability. If I'm punished for focusing on one specific set or item type, then I generally spread out what I buy and make each run a general run, which means every run ends up the same and there's less reason for me to replay it.

This game seems to have taken a lot of inspiration from Risk of Rain, or at the very least independently converged on some similar themes and gameplay ideas. These similarities make it easier to compare the feel of the two and it makes some of the problems with this game more apparent. Risk of Rain, Vampire Survivors, and other "Roguelike Survival" esque games generally succeed on a difficult early game due to the low power of the player, and a difficult end game due to the power of enemies. A core aspect of these games is that the player's power growth over the course of the game tends to accelerate, the monsters might also get stronger at a similar or even faster rate, but the player feels rewarded for long runs by getting powerups more often.

This game takes the opposite approach, it feels like it has the progression of an MMO or hardcore looter shooter, where the further you progress the slower your progress gets, upgrades increase in price every time you get them and many get less powerful after the first instance of the item. This is an acceptable decision if the progress made actually means something, permanent or meta progression CAN have this sort of decelerating power curve, the temporary power a player has in an individual run should not. Not only does it make the player feel less rewarded for sticking in a longer run, it also makes specialization into specific aspects of a kit harder. This kills replayability. If I'm punished for focusing on one specific set or type of items, then I'm generally going to spread out what I purchase and make every run a generalist run, which means every run ends up feeling the same and there's less reason for me to replay it.

This to me is the core issue this game has at the moment. Theres a lot of other minor issues like poor communication on some of the skill descriptions and stats, the spawnrate of enemies making the levels feel empty and boring at times, and the requests to wishlist the full game feeling a bit too omnipresent, or even enemies attacking from off screen making you go play hide and seek to hunt them down like a chore, but those all feel like minor aspects of gameplay that could easily be fixed at a later date, the progression curve however feels like a much more core part of the game's design and therefore to me comes across as a much more damning issue.

I wouldn't reccomend this game to friends as is, even with the free pricetag, and if the full version seems to have the same issue with pacing I don't see myself ever trying it out. This game has a lot of potential and a lot of aspects of it are really well made, but at the end of the day it's a game in a genre that lives and dies by the moment to moment feel of the gameplay, and thats one aspect I feel it fails on past the first few hours of exploring it.

I want to preface this review by stating that Gatekeeper is a fun game. It is a fun twist on the roguelike bullet-hell genre. Albeit it is strikingly similar to the Risk of Rain franchise. So much so that I would have sworn that Gatekeeper was developed by the same studio, but it isn't.

To say Gatekeeper is strikingly similar to the Risk of Rain franchise is a literal understatement. In fact Gatekeeper is so similar I would call it a copycat and a copyright infringement. The GUI elements are a 100% direct copy of RoR 2. The character skills are nearly a 100% direct copy, only with different names. Many gameplay elements are obviously stolen from RoR 2 as well. The only real difference between RoR 2 and Gatekeeper is that RoR2 is 3D and Gatekeeper is 2.5D.

Yes Gatekeeper is fun, but that is only because those of us that enjoy playing Risk of Rain 2 will find this copy cat fun as well. For all the above reasons I am disappointed to say that I cannot give Gatekeeper a positive review and for those same reasons I must give it a negative review. A copy cat is a copy cat after all.

It's a blatant ripoff/clone of Risk of Rain, without any new ideas, and many elements feeling drag-and-drop. Same number of abilities, similar method of adding basic modifiers to them, same kind of repetitive enemy variety, same objective/boss combination where you have to stay in a specific circle while fighting lots of waves, same type of level progression -- except it's 2D and not nearly as imaginative. The abilities aren't very distinct and by the end of a run you've got them all. The rare, fun-ish upgrades are too rare and also don't do much. The starter guy's abilities are almost a 1 to 1 copy of RoR's starter guy. Hell, even the ART DESIGN is pretty much identical but worse, with the same kind of grainy blue overtone common to the early levels and the same bland looping synthwave music.

For all that it manages to be medium fun, don't get me wrong. But this kind of unimaginative and derivative stuff feels like it's just barely toeing the line of ethical game creation. Don't support this kind of crap.

This is one of the most bland things I've ever experienced. It starts off strong with the opening, soundtrack, and presentation, but then falls flat on its face with its abhorrent lack of character. Incredible how it managed to do that. I played it with my friends and about 90% of the commentary was either about how something could have been done better or how uninspired the game felt. Which is wild considering they used Risk of Rain as inspiration. Nothing about the gameplay in the demo is remarkable or memorable, besides our distaste.

To top it off, the game likes to add flavor text across many elements. Like "Siren" meaning the boss of a biome, or "Quorium" meaning teleporter. It does this to the point of obscurity. It's like the game needs and wants character, but is unable to properly add it.

The previous demo felt good. Especially with the defensive game mode I remember playing. This is making me reconsider getting the game entirely. Complete 180.

I unlocked the other two characters, played them all, ran through to level 20, and was bored by then. The powerups and items are not exciting in the slightest, and there are next to no synergies outside of Ability Damage scaling or On Hit spam, and it just felt a bit flat. Was fun for 3 hours but I can't see it being any more fun beyond that unfortunately. I'm glad they have the free demo here, I'd have been upset if that was all the game had to offer.

Game itself is pretty boring and bland. Got pass stage 8 and same stuff over and over again. Same 3 type of mobs over and over again. No boss or if it was a boss, felt like a super mob instead of a boss. No mechanic and boring slow fight of me just running around the boss in circle autoing my basic attack until it died..... Upgrades were dull and boring. Maybe I just didnt get far enough to notice all the cool/nice things? but it got too boring to even continue...

Disappointing. I expected this to be a fun prologue leaving me wanting more, but all it left me with was wanting to leave as soon as possible. It's dreadfully repetitive, every run is the exact same, I had to leave mid run because I was so bored. It's just three different objectives that get cycled, enemies are pretty much the same for the most part, the upgrades are the exact same with every evolution, offering minimal change in gameplay. It's super boring, and I will not be buying the full game. 3.5/10

kinda boring