taking a twin-stick shooter and pairing it with pinball and an emphasis on 3d movement (despite having no jump button!) is something that would normally have me skeptical, but they really, truly made it work. there are some really solid ideas in the systems and animations that make this thing feel great to play from the second you fire it up. it reveals a small handful of issues as you play it though, and while each problem is a tiny one, they stack up in ways a few players might find really frustrating.
for one, it suffers from some readability issues. the game's got a ton of satisfying visual effects but smack in the middle of all the action are boosters and bumpers and jump pads that can be difficult to see when you're focused on dodging bullets (or vice versa). you run into similar issues with the perspective, which is fine 98% of the time but will occasionally cause you to take damage when you attempt to traverse what is actually a really tiny ledge that blocks your movement, or when you try to dodge an attack that's actually passing harmlessly above your head. skill issue? maybe. (probably.)
my other qualm is with mid-run progression. the passive upgrades (i.e. pickups that are not guns or abilities) are fairly underwhelming. some of them can be strong but none of them are truly exciting, with most of them being simple steroids - a boost to ability damage, a boost to fire rate after colliding with an enemy, etc. the guns and abilities force real change in how you play the game, but the game effectively trains you out of taking these passive upgrades with a tremendously boring early selection. the weirder issue, though, is that shop prices before a boss are tuned very strangely - some of the items seem nearly impossible to afford (especially going into the first boss) and you'll rarely be in a situation where you're buying 2 or more items from the shop unless you're grabbing the two cheapest things.
what i find harder to describe is what's actually good about the game - not because there's so little to describe, but because a lot of it comes down to little design tricks whose contributions are mostly experiential. guns feel punchy, there's a real sense of speed when you're in ball form, and the way physics apply to enemies means that slamming into things at high speed can result in some really delightful secondary effects where ramming a single enemy can air-mail them into two more hapless bozos, sending them right off the map. the developers know how to make a game that feels good to play and that becomes really obvious when you're not running into those issues from earlier. popping out of the fast-but-floaty ball form mid-air to take a couple precise shots before balling up again and goomba stomping some idiot makes you feel like a wizard, as does learning how to use your dash optimally - it functions as a multitool, letting good players choose between adjusting their momentum, refilling their ammo w/ a glory kill, or parrying an attack.
i wouldn't go so far as to say that it's a game-changing roguelite but i definitely think it deserves more attention than it's got. it's got a lot of the same strengths as something like Roboquest - hell, they've got the same steam review score - but this has 1/60th the audience. it's 40% off at the time of writing but if $12 USD is too rich for your blood then it's worth watching during the summer sale, if nothing else.
for one, it suffers from some readability issues. the game's got a ton of satisfying visual effects but smack in the middle of all the action are boosters and bumpers and jump pads that can be difficult to see when you're focused on dodging bullets (or vice versa). you run into similar issues with the perspective, which is fine 98% of the time but will occasionally cause you to take damage when you attempt to traverse what is actually a really tiny ledge that blocks your movement, or when you try to dodge an attack that's actually passing harmlessly above your head. skill issue? maybe. (probably.)
my other qualm is with mid-run progression. the passive upgrades (i.e. pickups that are not guns or abilities) are fairly underwhelming. some of them can be strong but none of them are truly exciting, with most of them being simple steroids - a boost to ability damage, a boost to fire rate after colliding with an enemy, etc. the guns and abilities force real change in how you play the game, but the game effectively trains you out of taking these passive upgrades with a tremendously boring early selection. the weirder issue, though, is that shop prices before a boss are tuned very strangely - some of the items seem nearly impossible to afford (especially going into the first boss) and you'll rarely be in a situation where you're buying 2 or more items from the shop unless you're grabbing the two cheapest things.
what i find harder to describe is what's actually good about the game - not because there's so little to describe, but because a lot of it comes down to little design tricks whose contributions are mostly experiential. guns feel punchy, there's a real sense of speed when you're in ball form, and the way physics apply to enemies means that slamming into things at high speed can result in some really delightful secondary effects where ramming a single enemy can air-mail them into two more hapless bozos, sending them right off the map. the developers know how to make a game that feels good to play and that becomes really obvious when you're not running into those issues from earlier. popping out of the fast-but-floaty ball form mid-air to take a couple precise shots before balling up again and goomba stomping some idiot makes you feel like a wizard, as does learning how to use your dash optimally - it functions as a multitool, letting good players choose between adjusting their momentum, refilling their ammo w/ a glory kill, or parrying an attack.
i wouldn't go so far as to say that it's a game-changing roguelite but i definitely think it deserves more attention than it's got. it's got a lot of the same strengths as something like Roboquest - hell, they've got the same steam review score - but this has 1/60th the audience. it's 40% off at the time of writing but if $12 USD is too rich for your blood then it's worth watching during the summer sale, if nothing else.
Game is fun but doesn't have much for replayability. And the sound mixing is extremely grating after a bit.