Short version
So far, Exoverse has strong gunplay, Theoretically it could create a good mix with Roguelike elements.But it doesnt offer enough to create that RNG type runs that makes each playthrough feel so special. Additionally, i hope the level design will eventually go through some major changes

I debated whether i should add my opinion to the bowl this early. While it is early access, which means potential changes down the line following player feedback. The truth is, this seems like a satisfied player base already, that left me thinking, its very much not the game for me, it probably wont ever be.

Of course enemies are still waiting for animations, NPC rest in T-Poses for the time being, i do expect some flair to the finished product, this being Wrack and all.
But since i have problems with the gameplay mechanics and how it balances its genres, doubt my opinion will change drastically.

Not to bring back old wounds, but i get it, part of me knew Wrack wouldn't come back, at least how we used to know it. It was niche, it never even got to episode 2. This back then, now the store is so full, most games don't even have the required reviews to generate a score.
Therefore comes exoverse, by nature of the genre, should be finished without an extensive amount of work, while providing more hours of gaming.

Exoverse got me thinking of Sanctum, if you are looking really hard for reasons to buy this game, I have some:

• An easy to learn pacing.Tried Sanctum 2 and didn't find it accessible? well Exoverse is simple without being easy.
  
• good UI
  
• Some kickass weapon animations
  
• The cel shaded art style
  
• Good music
  
• longer than wrack,though it pretends to give more content than there actually is.

Cons or why this game aint for me: (First started playing this game in its early stages, don't be surprised if the entire list is strikethrough)

• Terrible level design and the cost of having procedural generated levels. I really cant deal with the lack of detail, the giant walls, this claustrophobic cubicles. Even the second map, supposedly outside, we still got to deal with giant walls covering any possible background, and corridors made of 90º angles.
  Probably the only good criticism i can offer, but the map doesnt necessarly need to be made of corridors, it could evem extend outside the player area, it would feel less claustrophobic.
  
• Small arsenal when it comes to item spawns, but it has the potential for an RNG type run, where you must make it work with whatever you can find. In other words, it aint that great of a roguelike right now.
  No longer an issue, there is a bigger variety of weapons, and a wider range off items spawns
  
• Its repetitive, it needs more, for each turn, but i'm not sure what exactly

The original Wrack was an Old school Shooter (there weren't that many). Now, it steps down, entering a genre that often lends itself to a few shortcomings.

That's Right! Wrack went Tower Defense. Actually...its an Hybrid. Mixing TD with an FPS (it has been done before), with just some RPG and Roguelike elements sprinkled on top.
Full disclosure, while i have my own reasons, i'm not a fan of TD, there have been some games i've enjoyed, that still didn't convince me on the genre.

Exoverse tackles both genres in a safe way, its already a well made game in some areas, but the way it does is a bit dull.

One way Wrak balances itself is by keeping everything separated. HUB, TD, FPS, other elements, everything waits for their turn. But since it's relatively simple, it gets repetitive.

The hub - Is where every player starts their run. and...let me tell you a secret, you will come back often.
So immediately there was this great idea to close every shop, and the player slowly populates the hub with shop keepers as he levels up, which immediately feels like i'm being rewarded for losing. Most importantly, this would ruin so many games with rogue like elements. You do find items in-game, but you really depend on this hub, it will make things progressively easier.
Time to take whatever you can, if you are new, than you just get some turret schematics and enter the portal.

TD - Once inside, it's time to set up some turrets, build a few walls. No problem, there is no pressure. It gives you all the time you need, plus the horde is always displayed near the portal.
It kinda sucks, that once its set up, you can't really fix them or upgrade them, in the middle of a round, just let them do their thing until the end of the turn.
Truth be told, after a while i kept doing the same thing over and over. The strategy is heavily reliant on saving funds. It's the main resource of this game, in that aspect is similar to other games that have Roguelike elements.
That's about it, you dont even get to upgrade early in game. i also wondered how well it would go if i created some maze like walls and then converge them into the line of sight of various turrets, but walls consume so much funds, with later enemies even being able to blow the up, that the best strategy was just to find the best places to set up turrets.
At least doing so leaves room for some run and gun.

FPS - 3 rounds to defend and survive, using your arsenal (From the initial Pistol and sword) while the turrets do their thing, since those are no longer interactable.There is a spawn point, items appear at the beginning of each round, the item is random, it could be a weapon or full health. The two genres are balanced, but that comes at a cost, while there are things turrets can't handle well, the player is also less effective than before. There is now a dedicated key for running, and huge damage reduction with distance.

RPG and Roguelike elements - Death is just around the corner. Once it happens, it's time to gain some XP and level up, unlocking the much needed shops and even other characters with different set ups. And then, right back to the hub, because Exoverse has perma death



Issues with the Current Update:
Now, im having trouble with Bosses not spawning, and turns not ending. Ive raced around the room looking for enemies, perhaps inside walls, but nothing there.

Well, after a lot of gameplay, I hope I can show what the game has to offer in this review if you are not sure on buying it.

The game is a "sequel" to Wrack, coming in an Arcade FPS Rogue-like Tower Defense(wow!) format, and what we already have it's pretty good and solid. The graphics are beautiful, the animations are pretty good(even on early access) and the soundtrack is amazing like the first game. (at least the ones we have right now)

The start may seem a little slow because there are a lot of mechanics to introduce and items and skills to unlock, but after you start unlocking things it gets much better.
Shooting is satisfying. The game is challenging. Power-shots are the most delicious thing in the entire ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ world.

About the mechanics: The game rewards you with money if you keep a good kill streak, and makes it possible with the fact that you can blow out corpses to full your "kill-streak" bar or swap weapons fast enough to keep the chain going(you can have 4 weapons max) and it gives you enough time for it. The Power-Shot(now unlocked earlier on "Scattered and Shaken" update) is an "alt-fire" that you can use to boost the power of your normal weapon shot and increases the power of the shot based on the stats of the original weapon. For example: the bazooka does splash damage. The power-shot of the bazooka applies burning and increases the splash range. The power-shot has a meter that you increase by hitting enemies, and it doesn't have a time-limit or drop rate if you don't use it, so you can save it to critical times, like when you have a lot of enemies grouped for a nice bazooka shot or a very big strong enemy with a giant shield and you have that sweet revolver to do that extra damage.

The weapons have strengths and weaknesses and they are very clear(just press tab during gameplay). Some are useful against shields(revolver, for example) some are good close quarters, and do extra damage(shotgun), some have splash damage(bazooka) and this in particular changes your gameplay a lot through runs(consider the game right now has half of the promised arsenal)

The game has some real tactic to it, since enemies can destroy the walls you build, the turrets you put, or even chase you around, depending on what you do, where you stay. So you can aggro some enemies near turrets or far from the Beacon, and if you run too far they will ignore you and go for the Beacon again. That's a pretty good way to spice things up, and change how good you perform on your run.

The other RNG aspects like runes, items and artifacts are very cool and enough to change the gameplay. The weapons have limited range, so if you get a range rune with a Sniper character, or you got a good rifle, or you got a burning bullet rune and you have a shotgun(that's pretty sweet btw), you maybe have to change the way you play, it depends a lot on what you get. You change your game style quite often because you keep receiving different runes, consumables, weapons and power ups through the entire game, and you can carry only one rune, and one consumable item at a time.

The latest update completely changed the relic system, which was kinda clunky. But now, it's working well. Let me explain: Level 13 you unlock relics, items that drop from enemies and you use to unlock new items to the stores or to increase your money by selling them, and they keep on your inventory forever, even after you close the game. It encourages you to risk yourself to get it, especially the rarest ones, like the tubaki wing for example.

You can play the game with more than one character, each one having a different weapon and stats, and that's great, since Wrack itself suffered from variety in combat and lack of weapons. My favorite one for now is Vance.

I say give it a go. It's already good and worth the price, and probably will be awesome. It has variety, strong gunplay, lots of enemy types to fight...And at least in this new Wrack game you can actually see projectiles coming at you lol

While roguelike features are a fun twist to the action tower defense genre, it's unfinished with plenty of placeholders. The core of the game is fun and interesting but once you start seeing placeholders for items and t-posing characters in a fully released game your immersion will be broken and you won't take it seriously anymore.

The bigger issue it has is it never got advertised much and the fans of the original Wrack weren't really into TD genre, so there was no one this would cater too, unless you were lucky to find it, for that reason the developers went out of business and it's now never gonna be complete. I'll still recommend it as the game is good, for what there is, but do take this into the account if you're gonna get it.

Grand game that breathes some damn fresh life into the genre, Sanctum 2 with some Borderlands vibes and with much better gunplay and animations and weapon sounds than Sanctum. An impressive amount of variety with the variables you can play with. I never was much of a tower defense guy so I was on edge to buy the game, watched the dev stream it for a bit and was immediately blown away by the way it felt. Just FEELS good to play, ya know? Amazing work, can't wait to see what more comes outtah it, keep it up ya badasses!

Interesting concept, that's already working better than Wrack. It's fun and surprisingly addictive, however right now it's definitley worth of it's Early Access title - it feels fairly incomplete and it's a bit buggy.

I like the puzzle aspect to building a maze. Not only do you have to work around which turret you have but there's stuff in the way. It requires thinking! I love trying to craft the perfect maze. Maximizing the turrets use takes planning. But the game gives you all the information you need. The overhead view is nice.

The guns don't feel great to shoot. However, there's a power shot you can build up to that's fun. There's also a combo meter I feel the need to worry about. I'm almost in a competition with my turrets to see who can kill more aliens.

Nothing ground breaking but it's an interesting set of mechanics that work well together.

Video Review: https://youtu.be/2CXywCpybZM

Click to see my curator for more reviews!

If you're not someone who believes that the first Wrack is a sincerely excellent game (which I will stand by until the day I die), you're probably here because you saw something about the roguelike or tower defense stuff. And it's certainly true that there's roguelike and tower defense stuff here: each randomly generated level is a series of randomly generated waves of enemies that must be repelled with randomly dropped weapons and items alongside your increasingly more absurd maze of increasingly more absurd turrets, with everything you do contributing to the broader meta-loop of unlocking more weapons and items that can randomly drop in later runs. From where I've gotten so far, it looks like there's a lot to be seen and unlocked, including new characters that can heavily change up how you interpret your runs.

But as someone who isn't usually affected by that sort of stuff, what turns me on here is the sheer joy of shooting. The first Wrack's main combat loop took the wide arsenal and enemy variety of old school shooters like Doom and Quake and put it into an arcade framework where you have to juggle your weapons and prioritize enemies to kill as many in a row as possible, with your reward being a kickass finishing move, but also some mostly useless points. Exoverse refines all of that both in purpose and style: Those "points" are now your money that you need to purchase and upgrade your turrets; the power of your finishing move is now a stat that has to be upgraded alongside everything else over the course of a run; the way your kickass move looks, well, kicks more ass. All of those mechanics link perfectly into the resource management of a tower defense and the risk/reward of a roguelike; going for bigger and bigger chains gets you more to work with and makes you more powerful, but always puts you at the edge of a run-ending death.

There's something here for everyone, then. If you like the meticulous turtling of tower defense games, get Exoverse. If you like the "always something new on the horizon" of a roguelike, get Exoverse. If you just like a good-ass shooter, get Exoverse.

There's no game quite like Wrack: Exoverse

A Roguelike, Tower Defense, FPS
Just the genres speak for themselves. This is a fun, unique experience. Just like the first game Wrack, the gameplay feels pretty good and the comic visual style is amazing. The experimental blend of genres and the Wrack universe is what makes this game a gem. Making a fun or interesting Roguelike or Tower Defense is tough but Exoverse does both! Keeping it casual and not overdoing it, this game is layback. I played for around 10 hours and felt satisfied, and has potential for replayability.

Not many complaints. My game crashed a few times and lost that current run. Game can look a little unfinished in some areas but nothing too bad or gamebreaking. Just wish there was more levels, achievements, unlockables or reasons to just keep playing.

Overall
If this game looks at all interesting to you, get it! This is a nice, little, experimental, Gem. As a fan of Tower Defenses, FPS's, and newly to RogueLites, this game can scratch all of those itches. If you enjoy the varied gameplay, you'll love this game!

Good game play but no depth. There are many turrets and weapons and hints at an interesting universe but you don't really work towards any of that. There is no persistent progress or growth. Every game is an island of its own and while it is fun enough, there isn't enough depth to hold you in for more than a few matches.

Better that Sanctum.You need to add endless mode, multi-user mode, fix some errors, add the ability to pay in the store for updating items so that players can assemble the assembly that they would like to play!
8/10
Postscript I have been playing Tover Defense for 10 years, thanks to the developers for this game! Please do not stop improving the game!
-Please redo the mechanics of the machine-gun tower, for 3 worlds I could not find the marker, the balance of the game.
Passed a game on hardcore.