I'm the kind of person who stays as far away from roguelikes as possible, but this looked cute and I just so happened to get three months of game pass via the purchase of a ROG Ally so I went ahead and tried it.

The gameplay loop is surprisingly good and sees you clearing out waves of enemies while turning your cat mech into a ball and bouncing about to deal damage and do some light platforming here and there. It is a lot of fun just rolling off a ramp and repeatedly landing on an enemy to wittle away at their health. The gunplay is fine, but it wasn't long until I found my favorites and simply ignored everything else.

Roguelikes are known for their brutal difficulty, but I was able to finish this one for the first time after three or four runs. Whether or not I got lucky...I'm not sure. That's one of many things I can't stand about this sub genre.

I really hope the devs will make another game like this with non-randomized encounters and actual level design based around the core mechanics. Like flinthook, I can't help but feel this is a great concept held back by being rougelike.

One of the more fun roguelikes I have played in recent memory. The art style and direction are amazing and the music is stellar. The game's presentation is extremely well done and has a ton of charm to it. The gameplay is pretty kinetic and moving around as a ball with weapons is pretty smooth albeit some hiccups with how levels are designed. The economy is pretty well tuned and getting ability, weapon, and trait upgrades never feels grindy, which is good considering how much stuff there is to unlock. Moment to moment gameplay is very fun, I just wish the "build" aspect was a bit more appealing. I never really felt like I had to think about what upgrades and weapons I wanted to get since there's clearly a hierarchy of what is better than what. Stuff doesn't "synergize" as much as they cram together to make something.

Overall though, it's a fun time!