Operation Steel is a roguelike shoot-em-up rendered in beautiful hand-drawn art. Blow up loads of enemies, destroy huge bosses, find weapons, and upgrade your load-out between levels. Combat the electronic legion across 20+ procedurally generated levels!
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"A roguelike euroshmup with early-2000's deviantart energy" should be a recipe for disaster. From a distance, there's no real getting around it: It looks ugly. There's no consistent theming or vibe to hold it together. Screenshots and footage do it a huge disservice, with the color shading choices, the inconsistent aesthetic, and how uninspired the bullet patterns are. The sales pitch surrounding this game really doomed it from ever being much more than a niche quirk, which sucks, cause the core gameplay is pretty solid.
Even though a lot of shit is randomized, none of it feels 'bad' or haphazard. 97% of the patterns all feel organic and fairly reactable. The shop component is handled really well, you get a good chunk of money each stage and it feels really satisfying to get 2 health packs and a weapon upgrade after a hard boss, with cash to spare. Way more generous than most roguelikes in that regard, and all-around fun. Weapons are all a treat to collect and experiment with. And even though the graphics are sub-optimal, the music is shockingly strong. As a combined gameplay experience, it's smooth and really addictive, helped further by the short runtimes.
Really, the breaking point besides the graphics is the awkward difficulty bumps. This game's challenge can feel like death from a thousand cuts because if you have any experience with shmups, you're not gonna have any trouble with this, and yet about 3% of enemy patterns feel completely unreactable - and in a game where you only get a few hits before game over, that's bullshit. Moments like the fucking bull boss ramming into the screen and causing a bullet shockwave, enemy AI getting wonky and firing nigh-unavoidable walls of bullets, those fucking tie-fighter enemies that shotgun you from center field, etc. This is the one spot where the roguelike structure is severely detrimental to the experience, because unlike a lot of other games where you can just memorize or grind your way through a bad moment, you have to just pray nothing jumpscares you. It's not an enormous breaking point but it's a huge demotivator.
If you donated to itch.io's Ukraine fund (and, I mean, you should), this is one of the cooler curiosities from the bundle. Definitely a book you shouldn't judge by its cover, and I hope the developer's future works turn out well.
Even though a lot of shit is randomized, none of it feels 'bad' or haphazard. 97% of the patterns all feel organic and fairly reactable. The shop component is handled really well, you get a good chunk of money each stage and it feels really satisfying to get 2 health packs and a weapon upgrade after a hard boss, with cash to spare. Way more generous than most roguelikes in that regard, and all-around fun. Weapons are all a treat to collect and experiment with. And even though the graphics are sub-optimal, the music is shockingly strong. As a combined gameplay experience, it's smooth and really addictive, helped further by the short runtimes.
Really, the breaking point besides the graphics is the awkward difficulty bumps. This game's challenge can feel like death from a thousand cuts because if you have any experience with shmups, you're not gonna have any trouble with this, and yet about 3% of enemy patterns feel completely unreactable - and in a game where you only get a few hits before game over, that's bullshit. Moments like the fucking bull boss ramming into the screen and causing a bullet shockwave, enemy AI getting wonky and firing nigh-unavoidable walls of bullets, those fucking tie-fighter enemies that shotgun you from center field, etc. This is the one spot where the roguelike structure is severely detrimental to the experience, because unlike a lot of other games where you can just memorize or grind your way through a bad moment, you have to just pray nothing jumpscares you. It's not an enormous breaking point but it's a huge demotivator.
If you donated to itch.io's Ukraine fund (and, I mean, you should), this is one of the cooler curiosities from the bundle. Definitely a book you shouldn't judge by its cover, and I hope the developer's future works turn out well.