Recent reviews by ShellShotty

Ice Climber 2: Good Game Edition

A really great take on the survivors genre, actually requires you to use your brain and isn't wholly mindless junk food.
More of a roguelite that happens to have survivors gameplay, the backpack inventory system is really cool and adds lots of depth. RNG can still occasionally screw you and it can be hard to tell what's going on in claustrophobic situations at times.

Really all I'd want to see is "more stuff" in the final product and those fat puking jerks to be nerfed a little. Player speed could afford to be bumped up a touch and more variety in levels would be nice as well. Definitely keeping my eye on this!

Shows a lot of promise and is an interesting premise for a roguelite, reminds me of Patch Quest with the different playable creatures. Incredibly pretty visuals, feels quite good to control and plays well, no complaints on polish. I think what will determine Morsels' longevity is the amount of content it provides. That's the main "wait and see" aspect but I'm a bit skeptical given the high quality assets and lack of "room" layout variety I've seen thus far.

My only real quantifiable nitpicks is the esoteric nature of the game's stat/item system and that the reload cooldown makes the basic shooter creatures feel like a chore to play when you can basically only shoot 3/4 projectile volleys before needing to wait. The bomb and punching morsels felt far better than the starting gum and flower ones.

Another note is every time I fought the burger boss it seemed to be a pushover and go down incredibly quickly. I never felt like I needed to learn the patterns to engage with it but maybe I was lucky with my builds? Also I personally don't mind the Spelunky-like ghost time limit mechanic of the snake but it definitely should be more obvious when it spawns.

An absolutely excellent game with some problems stemming from over-ambition and focus issues. Before I go in-depth, the quick rundown is that if you like shooter roguelites and are willing to give the game a proper amount of time to learn, you will love Doomsday Hunters. If you are easily overwhelmed or like your games on the simpler side I'd wait on some updates that iron out the new player experience.

I'll quickly go through the good things but I'll mostly focus on issues I currently think need addressed. One of the main draws is the immense amount of mechanical variety, items are plenty, shooting feels good, music is great, and the game has gorgeous spritework. You are given tons of options both during and when preparing for runs that let you craft the playstyle you want and you can become immensely powerful with the right choices. Synergies are satisfying and it's fun to find something new to play with.

Lots of depth but poorly explained
The first big issue I have is that the game is very unfriendly when it comes to easing you into mechanics. You get a very basic tutorial and that's it. What's stamina? What's energy and why is it draining? How do I use my inventory? What's radiation? What's alien tech? Etc. Then you get bombarded with choices and mechanics immediately without giving the player much breathing room, which I feel could be a turn off for a lot of people. Many systems are in place but poorly explained. If these were rolled out slower and explained better I think players would be more receptive to them. Perhaps utilizing the pretty unlock rooms in a way to further tutorialize and unlock these mechanics over the course of the first few runs it would go over better for most people and ease the overwhelming nature of the game. Tooltips while mousing over things like Synthetik has would also give the player much needed info on mechanics.

Difficulty incentives and unlock pacing
The second big problem I feel is difficulty and unlocks. How both are handled is poor right now- currently as of writing this review there is no real incentive for playing on higher difficulties (universes), higher fury ranks, or using hard modifiers from the terminal by where you start a run. Outside of achievements, which you can earn even with the "easy" modifiers btw, there is no benefit to playing with higher difficulty beyond your own self-imposed challenge. I would like the game to challenge me and reward me for it. Even something as small as keeping track of what difficulty you beat the game at on a specific character would go a long way. As it stands, there is no reason to try to beat the game as other characters outside of your own curiosity. Achievements tied to this, stats being shown on what you've done, some unlocks, or even extras such as character skins or recolors tied to the difficulty you beat the game at would go a long way to incentivize challenging the player. With the current power curve it also feels like in many runs the difficulty is front loaded and gets easier instead of more challenging by the end.

This ties into the unlock system which is also very glacial after a certain rank. From level 1-30 you are bombarded with unlocks almost too fast if you do even semi-well at the game. Then after that you are grinding boss tokens and meta coins at a very slow pace. You only get one token per boss, no matter the difficulty. There are usually only two unlock chances for a new item using these tokens in-game, which cost 5-7 tokens each. You can also unlock these new items in the hub for 15, but it is extremely inefficient to do so. Note that these unlocks are where the bulk of the new things to play with are, 30 hours in and I'm at like 60 out of 300+ unlocks and only getting two per full run. So you will be playing with a limited set of items unless you grind your ass off. I think a lot of the items could be tied to beating the game as certain characters on certain difficulties too, far too much is gated behind boss tokens.

Tying this back into difficulty, why not make it so we earn more boss tokens, XP, and meta coins for playing at higher difficulties with more modifiers? This would alleviate the slow grind and actually give a reason to play on harder modes. As it stands, you can beat all universes with easy modifiers to get the achievements tied to it, then grind out universe 1/2 over and over for boss tokens which is much easier than doing it on a harder and more engaging mode. To add on to this, with the skill tree and meta progression you're only making the game easier over time but with no reason to do so if the game isn't exactly challenging. I should want to level that skill tree to be able to fight harder on punishing difficulties, but without real incentive to do so no matter how small the skill tree feels moot. If there was incentive added it would go a long way, and more generalized "hard" modifiers in the mod terminal would also become very welcome too assuming a reason for them is ever added.

Island variety
While the game has tons and tons of enemies, interactables in the environment, and NPCs to work with, I am still finding myself on the same layouts over and over. More islands would go a long way as there are simply tons of different things they could do with the existing assets to break up repetition of early islands. I also feel like the bulk of islands are too cramped for the fast paced combat. These existing islands are fine and don't need changed, but I would like to see them balanced out with more open islands added to the game. Generally the wider arena styled islands with more enemies are more fun than the cramped islands that feel more like puzzles with their corridor design and many traps.

Visually, I think some alternate color schemes for biomes or zones would be nice as well. The first few zones look about the same with next to no visual variety on repeat runs. I personally also preferred the brighter, more vibrant color schemes of the zones when the game was still called "iDracula Genesis". Now they are a bit more washed out and are less visually striking overall. Currently I think the desert area is by far the best looking as it's the least changed whereas the early zones are a tad drab now. I can look past this since they are still working with beautiful spritework but some more palettes for zones could go a long way. A blueish night time desert would look amazing for example.

Enemy design
As for enemies, I think there is too much reliance on second phases that cannot be mitigated without waiting. Things like the zombies that turn into bats or spiders are fine but the enemies who drop explosives or worse- explosives that chase you are extremely abundant in the game. I would be fine with them if you could shoot them to detonate them early but as it is now you must wait for them to explode as they are completely invincible. This just adds wait times after killing enemies or worse, cheap shots with the chasing ones especially. If I am running a melee weapon and I kill an enemy who turns into a chasing explosive I have zero options to deal with it if my jump is on cooldown. It just becomes annoying and feels more cheap than engaging. Besides exploding enemies, there are many that have phases of invulnerability you must wait on to attack them. These are never fun and there is so much of this kind of enemy design in this game, from the annoying cube enemies to the ones resembling Binding of Isaac hosts to the flesh mummy guys, waiting on these dudes to open their weak point just feels obnoxious rather than fun. All the non-invulnerable phase or explosive enemies are just so much more entertaining to fight overall.


TL;DR: Doomsday Hunters is incredibly fun but has some trouble easing new players into its many mechanics and doesn't do much to incentivize playing on harder difficulties, and has a fairly obnoxious grind that keeps you from experiencing a lot of the cool content

If you enjoy top down shooters or roguelites, you're doing yourself a disservice if you haven't played Synthetik already. This is by far one of the best roguelites out there and it will provide you with many many hours of fun once you wrap your head around the core gameplay mechanics. It very well might take a bit to get a feel for how to effectively play Synthetik, but stick with it and it will reward you with fast thrilling shootouts, immense depth, and a ton of replayability. I'd argue this game has the best gunplay of ANY top down game- guns are very punchy and the reload mechanics add a refreshing extra layer of depth, urgency, and satisfaction to combat you just don't see in many other titles. No weapon feels entirely pointless either and you can modify them to suit your needs which adds even more choice and strategy to how you approach your encounters. The online two player co-op is a great time with friends or just random members of the community.

There's also a free side expansion called Synthetik Arena on Steam which acts as a nice demo of sorts for those who are on the fence and would like to try it before deciding upon a purchase. It has a few mini bite-sized modes to play which will give you a general feel for the combat in Synthetik. Note that for the full roguelite experience, Legion Rising is still what you're after and while Arena is quite fun, it's not really the main attraction. Since I can't sing enough praises for Synthetik I'd really just advise you to try Arena for yourself if you're interested at all since it costs nothing but a tiny bit of harddrive space and your time. If you're looking for something new and satisfying gameplay is what you crave, give Synthetik a chance.

A fantastic co-op hidden gem with misleading advertising. The game is less of a slow-paced horror experience and more of a fast-paced Doom clone with a side of Diablo loot progression. You’ll be running around shooting hoards of demons in randomly generated levels with various pickups to gain trinkets that permanently boost your abilities and stats. A small hurdle however is that Unloved has a rough start, at the beginning you’ll only be gaining uninteresting loot/trinkets that essentially only adds +damage or +health, and there won’t be as many demons to shoot as you might expect in a Doom clone. With a bit of grinding (which is made much more fun in 4 player co-op) it eventually flourishes into letting you create fun and interesting builds that completely change the way you can play. You can become a speedy railgun wielding glass cannon or a tank that can regen health with melee, and a variety of others. With this you will also begin climbing into harder difficulties that will spawn many more monsters and the “real” game begins. If you can get past the somewhat amateur looking graphics and can endure a small bit of confusion and grinding, Unloved is a one of a kind game that definitely deserves your time.

It's the sequel to Country Justice I never knew I wanted until now.
Joking aside, it's a really great game. If you enjoyed Ziggurat or Tower of Guns you'll definitely enjoy this.

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"Boobs are life; butt is hometown."
- Kenichiro Takaki, creator of Senran Kagura