Recent reviews by roncli

Warning: If you're into addictive ARPGs, this game might hook you. :)

This game takes certain mechanics from Diablo 3 and Path of Exile and melds them together in a challenging ARPG where you can obtain endless power. The gameplay loop is fairly simple: you enter a map similar to how Path of Exile's map system works, kill and loot the enemies, do various events that spawn on the map, and then fight the map's end boss(es). When you succeed, you play another map. The catch is that the maps start to get harder. It's not like Diablo 3 where you can play on Torment XVI, and then go play on Torment I next game... once you run out of lower tier maps, that's it, you have to play a higher one. Eventually, you'll either die to a hard fight you can't get past, or you'll amass enough power to survive the endgame. You'll also be able to alter the maps in various ways, such as adding or rerolling map modifiers.

The core mechanic to gaining power isn't finding loot. Although you'll want to get a couple of strong weapons (you don't need the absolutely perfect weapon) and find some trinkets, you're mostly interested in gaining character levels, and with each level you can spend a point in a roguelike skill tree that is different every game and grows with each point spent. So if you want to add a projectile but it's 3 nodes away, you have to spend points on those 3 nodes to get to it. The game does let you modify the skill tree by rerolling nodes (or the whole tree), creating new connections, and adding skill nodes that you collect throughout the game. It's overwhelming at first, but as you play and start to learn how builds and resources work, you'll get the hang of it quickly.

Builds types you'll find are melee, ranged, companion, and condition (poison, fire, bleeding) builds. And, because leveling never stops, you can also try out a hybrid approach... and if you don't like it, just use your resources to refund the points and try something else! There are 8 characters with different strengths and core skills (you get to choose one at levels 10, 30, and 60) that really bring some depth to the builds.

There is also an "Unstable Rift" - think Diablo 3's greater rifts - that allows you to attempt to "ascend" your weapons, which gives it greater power and two skills, some of which are unique to being in weapons. The crafting system allows you to reroll the weapon's damage, stat attributes, and weapon skills, and you can also upgrade them to legendary or ascended.

For me, the best thing about this game is the fact that the developer is HIGHLY interactive with the community, and listens to feedback. I don't know how many various bugs I've reported, from poor performance to an enemy not firing at the player to achievements not being awarded... the developer has fixed most of them, and has implemented some suggestions to boot. For a two person team (one artist, one developer), having them be so involved is not only refreshing, but rather astonishing that they're able to continue work on season 2 and fix bugs for the current game at the same time. Big shoutouts to the team for generally being awesome. :)

And speaking of performance, if you played before 1.0.4 and didn't like how slow the game got in late game or in Descent Defense, give it another try. It's so much better than it was a month or two ago!

I feel like this game has a ton of potential in the map system. Right now, you can't do much with it, but some ideas:
- Story mode nodes that are "required" to unlock higher tiers. These maps would have a goal other than "kill everything", and could really help flesh out the lore of the game world.
- Implement rare currencies for maps that do things like target specific map mods, add a specific type of map mod, or guarantee a specific event appears on the map.
- Add map nodes that are rare! You could have a more difficult map with better rewards, or have fun maps kind of like Diablo 3's treasure realm or cow level.

All in all, this game comes highly recommended if you have an ARPG itch you need to scratch, and you want something a little more casual and less loot focused than Diablo 3 and Path of Exile. Give it a try!

I bought this game about a month or so before it was made free. It was a great puzzler that had its share of flaws, but was addicting enough that I finished all the Enclaves and solved over 95% of the random puzzles that spawn in the world. Got a good amount of enjoyment for my purchase, and got good value for my money.

So why leave a negative review? Because you will never get to share the experience that I had.

The game used to have an online mode. On November 1, 2024, online mode shuts down and goes single player only. Now, there wasn't much difference between online and offline mode, other than you could see other players and interact with them through pings and emotes, nothing more. When offline mode was promised, I was excited that the game's issues would be solved by having an offline mode, but that was not what happened. In fact, things are made worse by a flimsy game save system that can eat your save file if the game crashes at the wrong time.

There are also many, many, MANY flaws with the game itself that I put up with, but honestly just aren't acceptable for a game of this scale.

- Zones state that a certain number of puzzles spawn. This is often false, especially for crystal mazes, rolling blocks, flow orbs, and MOST especially sentinel stones. Sentinel stone puzzles, in fact, have some puzzles that literally never spawn... for instance, you will only ever find 43 in Verdant Glen, not the 52 advertised.

- Some puzzles simply will never spawn. In Verdant Glen on the west end of the island, there's a hidden ring that's supposed to spawn in the exact same location as a pillar. That ring never spawns because it's blocked by the pillar.

- There are a few places where you can clip out of bounds. Sadly, it's actually necessary for two puzzles (a matchbox on the Lucent/Autumn border and a pentad behind a rock wall next to a building in Serene)

- Glide Rings are bugged where you can't get mastery from them in future cycles if you get a perfect score on your first try.

- Flow Orbs are bugged where you can only get the mastery reward from bronze, silver, gold, and platinum once ever. The only way to get more mastery is by getting the bonus 1 mastery per 0.01 under the platinum time, which you can only get once per cycle.

There are many more bugs than what's listed here. And yet, less than a year after release, the developer has come out and said they will not be fixing these bugs. How am I supposed to trust this developer with their future games if they can't take care of one that has as much promise as this one?

Besides that, there's the horrible support you get from their publisher, Behaviour. It is very clear that their support is run by AI running large language models. Sorry, Paige, you're not real! This tells me that this publisher should also be avoided.

The decision to turn off online mode so soon after release is enough to convince me to stop playing this game. It was great entertainment while it lasted, but we live in a time when live service games just don't stick around. Imagine what this game would have been if it were offline mode from the start, and they could have focused on improving that rather than patching what they already put out. So much potential wasted.

Can't really recommend right now, largely because of how powerups work. You have to hold a powerup button to pick it up - otherwise you use it immediately. This is quite opposite with how most other games do powerups where it gets picked up when you run over it by default, and then you have to press a button to use it.

Also noticed a bug where if two ghosts are on top of each other, and you hit a power pellet and then attempt to eat them both, you only eat one of them.

The competition seems fun enough, but between the bugs and the price tag, I'm not sure this is worth my time yet.

UPDATE: Since my review, I have played solo on every Hazard difficulty 1 through 5, winning each run. Don't let that fool you into thinking this is an easy game. This is an adrenaline rush on the highest difficulty, and winning Hazard 5 was easily one of the most satisfying game experiences of 2023 for me.

If you enjoy Descent or other 6DoF co-op games, Desecrators is definitely for you.

My first experience in this game was a 4-player cooperative run with 2 people who have played it before and 2 who had not, although all 4 of us were highly experienced 6DoF players. We won that run with 0 revivals and 2 out of 4 of us alive. A very action-packed run!

A lot of the weapons feel really good to use, and I love how certain weapons perform better (or worse!) in different spaces. It really makes you think about how you use your loadout. I also like the power system! There are 3 power levels, you start every level at 1, and when you find a power.. uh.. powerup, you gain a power level making your weapons more powerful.

The enemies feel legitimately dangerous (we were playing on hazard 3, the middle difficulty of 5), but they weren't so challenging that I felt like I couldn't outsmart them. Charging headlong into a room was met with mixed results - one time I went from 256 shields and 128 hull to 40 hull in about half a second, and other times I'd clear the room with ease - so you do have to be careful about how you approach the levels.

Rivals felt like a legitimate danger. In fact, I died to one... by cluster bombing it point blank. I believe that's called a "Kulas", yes? :)

My main complaint about the game is that the weapon system is clunky. You get 4 slots each for primary weapons, secondary missiles, and mines... but there are more than 4 of each type of weapon. Without really knowing anything about the game, the weapon system was too overwhelming to figure out on the spot, and I left it up to my teammates to tell me if a good weapon was nearby so I could switch to it. I much prefer the systems other 6DoFs - and most arena shooters in general - have where there are assigned slots for each weapon, and you don't have to choose what you pick up or drop. The only comparable 6DoF game that does something like this is Sublevel Zero, and they at least let you pick up other weapons into an inventory system, which honestly would work for this game, too, since ammo is shared.

The other thing that annoyed me was the enemy weapon that causes you to drop all of your weapons. It's an obnoxious attack. I never figured out what it was that was doing that. Never mind, it was the pillager missile shot by the thief and super thief!

But overall, a very satisfying game, and a game that really feels like a candidate for speedrunning. I might have to try some runs of this in the near future!

FYI: This game was free on Steam at the time of this review, and is how I obtained a copy of this game.

TL;DR: Great Minesweeper variant, but can be hard to learn at first. Once you learn it, the replayability from the score chasing aspect of the game is fun.

Pluses:
- Retro Minesweeper interface, no fancy graphics required
- Challenging, replayable score-chasing gameplay that incorporates more strategy than just your normal minesweeper game

Cons:
- No animations can make for confusing transitions as you solve rows or get the 5 point bonus.
- Not great music and sound effects. Fortunately you can turn them off.
- Instructions are like an Ikea instruction manual, except you really won't understand what it's trying to tell you until after you play a few rounds.

First of all, if you like Minesweeper at all, you will probably enjoy this game. There really isn't any "Tetris" here, and honestly the word "Tetris" probably should be removed from the title of the game. The Tetris Company isn't exactly known for letting other games use their copyrights.

The way the game works is actually very simple. As you solve rows in the game field, they disappear. I'm not entirely sure what constitutes a "solved row" yet, although my main guess is all bombs have been flagged. When you are left with less than 4 rows on the playing field, you get a 5 point bonus and some new lines added to the playing field so you can keep playing.

What makes this game hard is that new rows are always being added to the field. Slowly at first, but it speeds up as the game goes on. When it can't add another row, you "top out" and the game is over.

There are a few things that make this different than normal Minesweeper. The biggest is that it's not necessarily game over when you hit a mine. Instead, you get 2 lines inserted on to the field. Of course, if you don't have room for 2 lines, THEN it's game over. This is a neat mechanic because it allows for 50/50s to not be so punishing, and in fact can be a strategy for speed where you set up a long vertical chain of 50/50s, then guess on 1, which adds 2 lines, but then you solve like a whole bunch of lines at once, making the line penalty almost meaningless.

Another difference is with right click does. If you're used to normal minesweeper, left click in an empty cell is the same, but right click in an empty cell is not. Right click does a question mark, which means you think it's a mine. A flag indicates that you have found a mine, and you can "find" mines by right clicking on numbers... NOT by simultaneously left and right clicking on a number like in the original game.

Once you get past the confusion of how lines clear, you will start to see new strategies develop. For instance, I don't like to play "flat"... instead I build up one side of the play field, and then burn it down by playing across to the other side. Playing flat can result in having very few numbers on the board, requiring guesses to get out of, which can be fatal if you have to make too many.

The music is very forgettable and the sound effects are obnoxious. Thankfully, there are mutes for that. Hopefully the developer can fix this in the long run.

Speaking of settings, they don't save between sessions. You have to mute the sound every time.

And one other negative for the is that there are achievements for dying. This is an anti-pattern, dying is not an achievement! It's annoying that you have to intentionally lose repeatedly just to get a steam achievement, and is not something I'm interested in doing. This got replaced with clicking a mine 1000 times, which is much better because this is something that can be done strategically to clear a bunch of rows at once at the cost of clicking on a mine. It still is a grind, but much less of one.

Looking past these negatives is easy, though, as the game is actually quite a creative take on Minesweeper, and I've already recommended this game to several of my Minesweeper-loving friends. Definitely check it out if you are one, too!

When reviewing a game, the price point is an important piece of data and must be factored in to the review. People want to know, is a modern Arkanoid game worth the $30?

A bit of context, I played the game during the 2-day free period, and lost access to play it until it went on sale for $2.99. I liked Arkanoid in the arcades, and decided to give it a shot. I started with Retro mode, which is a faithful reproduction of the arcade game. The levels are exactly the same, the only real difference is that it seems easier than the arcades. For reference, I never came close to beating Arkanoid on one credit in the arcades, yet I was the first to do so in this version. Maybe this is because the mouse is a superior controller versus the dial the arcades used, I am not sure. So the game itself is good, but Retro mode has several annoyances. They try to make it seem like you're in an arcade, and they do this by adding in crowd noise, quiet background music, and a really annoying "rounded" screen like you're playing on a CRT. This was wholly unnecessary, and does not add to the experience at all. There should be options to remove these elements.

After Retro, I tried Neo mode. This was a much better experience without all of the distracting elements Retro has. I like that the game is faster, but unfortunately that nerfs the "S" capsule as the amount it slows down the ball is not significant anymore, where in Retro it is a big deal. Neo adds a few new capsules, including "G" for giant balls and "T" for a safety net that allows you to miss hitting the ball once without dying. You can have multiple powerups at the same time, unlike Retro, and you can even double up on powerups. For example, two "E"s make your paddle even bigger, two "C"s give you a laser sight, and two "L"s make you fire faster. It also adds some new types of blocks. One of them turns all the blocks to gold - the maximum point value for blocks. One allows the ball to turn into a mega ball that smashes through all blocks except gold blocks. One is a bomb that explodes a bunch of blocks. The game has a combo mechanic which allows players that can survive longer the ability to get more points than someone who dies a lot. And you can die a lot because you get a ton of extra lives in this version. Overall, it's a fun game with 46 stages instead of Retro's 33, and an upgraded DOH fight.

The final version I played was the titular Eternal Battle mode. This is a 25 player battle royale mode in Neo mode. However, I've never seen close to 25 players in a game, unfortunately. A lot of AI opponents are added to make up the difference. The game itself is on a timer. Players are eliminated over time based on their score, with the lowest scoring player being the elimination. You lose 10% of your score on losing a life, so it's important to stay alive the whole time. There are powerups that drop from the enemies that you can use to attack your left or right opponent which does things like turn all your blocks into gold blocks temporarily, white blocks (the least scoring blocks) temporarily, or it'll do something like remove your paddle's powerup... there are several others as well. When you get down to 4 players, you get to fight DOH, which is identical to the fight at the end of Neo mode. Once all the other players are eliminated, you don't automatically win - you have to defeat DOH in a short, unforgiving time limit. You can place 1st and still not win, a very unique battle royale mechanic!

There is also local co-op, which I did not try, that appears to be on Neo mode as well. I'm not sure how it works.

So is this game good? Yes. Is it worth $30? Absolutely not! There are other great breakout-like games out there that are much cheaper than this and contain way more content. The only unique thing this game really offers is the battle royale mode, and other games tend to offer its battle royale mode for free, or at a really low price. I'm not really sure what they were thinking with this price point, and as a result, I cannot recommend this game unless it is sold at a lower price.

I've been looking forward to this game since I got my hands on a super early version at Day of the Devs 2018. The game has come a long way since then, and has turned into a beautifully crafted world with a story that you must piece together by finding memories throughout the game areas.

If you played the demo of the game, you got a single short level where you were able to power up real quickly. The final version spreads out the powering up over the course of the entire game, making it feel like a true metroidvania. You'll pick up powers such as double jumps, dashes, and hacking abilities that let you manipulate certain things within the game. There are also a total of 5 different weapons to find. I finished the game in about 9 hours of play time.

The powers themselves are mostly obtained linearly. There were only two instances where I had to go to a different zone to pick up a power and come back later to pick up something I couldn't get before. While a typical metroidvania would have you revisit areas a couple of times to get to that one area that you couldn't reach before, this game generally doesn't do that.

The button puzzles in the game get quite complex, but can be brute forced pretty easily. Learning how the logic gates works helps, but then you get to the second zone in HEX where there are literally tangled knots of logic gates. Good luck! I'm sure you could work out some of the puzzles by figuring out how the logic gates work, but I just decided to hit buttons randomly to see what they did. Usually there was a reset button that let you reset the puzzle if you get yourself softlocked on the other buttons. Generally I didn't have much trouble figuring them out eventually, and you can use hacking abilities if you get stuck.

If you do die, you very often will not lose a lot of progress, provided you remembered to hit a save point! This is good, because the enemies can seem a bit overwhelming at times. The flying ones are especially bad because they often get above you and shoot at you at an angle you can't shoot back at them. They also do a ton of damage if you stand still, so you have to be always moving against them. Later in the game you can hack them to destroy them outright, or have them work for you, but of course that's a power you have to earn!

One of the highlights of this game are the wonderfully constructed zones. USER, HEX and TET are amazingly constructed, while OKT has a pretty epic atmosphere. ICO is in its own category, as it's very vertical and disorienting to try to navigate. I spent quite some time trying to find the last memory in ICO as a result, which is a good thing... you wouldn't want to be able to just accidentally stumble into all the memories.

The other highlight is the story itself. Without giving the actual story away, the story itself is quite serious but injects some amusing elements, and put together it makes you want to collect every memory to both further the story and see what kind of amusing things happen with the crew. The writing is very well done.

The game is not 100% perfect. Elevators will move without you on them, I fell through a floor once, and I was able to glitch out one of the bosses to kill it easily. Also, the game is missing the ability to rebind controls (I hear that may be coming in a future update), and there is only one save slot. Finally, I found the OKT zone a bit monotonous personally, it's just a lot of jumping between platforms for literally the whole area. Your mileage may vary on that last one.

However, these issues do not detract from making this one of the best releases of the year for me. I highly recommend this game!

This game is exceedingly hard for me to review properly, but I'm going to take a stab at it.

Firstly, I recommended this game because I love this game. It has the right amount of challenge, can be played at whatever pace you feel like, and when you get that itch to go exploring, well this game's got that covered, too. I personally have taken on the challenge of becoming consistent at the game, having held the early access world record for most consecutive wins with 11 (and, I did it by doing only 11 orb runs). But know before getting into it that there are some clear downsides to Noita, especially with the 1.0 release, that I would like to speak to first. These changes made it very difficult for a casual player to get into the world of Noita, unfortunately. However, if you are seeking out a challenge, Noita is definitely for you.

My main point of contention is that 1.0 added forced randomized starting loadouts (previously they were opt-in by way of doing the daily instead of a normal game) that sometimes give you different spells and a different flask to work with. These cause needless suffering for new players for 3 reasons:

1) You can get a primary wand with a single spitter bolt on it. This single spitter bolt wand will have low range, poor accuracy, and poor speed, and can leave players vulnerable to enemy attacks. Even veterans can become overwhelmed if they suddenly find themselves surrounded by enemies, but new players are especially susceptible because they won't know what the correct enemy prioritization is, resulting in heavy damage or death. There are other bad primary wands as well, but the spitter bolt is the worst, and my hope is that spitter bolt - and anything with short range, really - gets removed from the initial primary wand pool. Great alternatives are spark bolt, bouncing burst, summon arrow, or magic arrow.

2) You can get a secondary wand with no explosives on it. While a rain cloud has its use (see the next point), the ability to get out of potential soft locked situations with an explosion is invaluable for new players, and not having an explosive spell to do so hurts new player progression.

3) You can get a random flask. This is the most inexplicable decision to me, because water is EXCEEDINGLY valuable at all levels of play: it can be used to put out fires, neutralize toxic sludge, make the player not take fire damage while stained with water, and kill one of the more challenging first zone enemies, the stendari. My recommendation is to ditch whatever flask it gives you when you start - even if beneficial - and replace it immediately with water. Water can be found to the left of start under the tree (you may have to dig, and you may not have the tools necessary to do it, but sometimes it's free), to the right if you're willing to climb the mountain with an appropriate explosive in the wall (ie: anything but a bomb) and find the lake, or if you start with the rain cloud wand.

Honestly, it is my opinion that Nolla should revert this change and make it opt-in for the daily only, or even enable it as an option for full runs. Why I find this important enough to bring up first is because there's literally a whole WORLD of things to explore and learn about this game to have to also deal with the frustrations of a randomized, and sometimes underwhelming starting loadout. Players are going to have their hands FULL tackling every challenge this game throws at it, and as you get deeper into the game those challenges grow bigger and more difficult. And THAT is what I LOVE about this game.

This game pulls no punches. You WILL get shot by the shotgunner. Repeatedly. You WILL die to enemies with a freeze wand, or a nuke wand, or machine gun concentrated light wand. You WILL kill yourself experimenting with wand building. You WILL find enemies you have absolutely no idea what they do, even after the 50th or 100th time you kill them, because, darn it, that enemy is going to die before you find out what kind of terror it will inflict on you! You WILL be running about panicked or scared because you know you can't deal with that one particular enemy, and now you're running headlong into a bunch of other enemies and... well, game over.

There's a REASON win streaks in this game are hard to come by, and that's because the game is HARD. It makes you stop and think about what you're about to do. Is going down this hallway without checking above and below a safe bet? Is there a propane tank lurking in the snow you're about to dig in that you can't see? Is that underwater chest going to have a thunderstone? Did I just hear Ukko or is that the wind? Often, second-guessing yourself and staying as safe as possible is the key to victory in Noita.

If you're a speedrunning type, Noita has got you covered. Runs of this game can be as short as 2 minutes, and involve absolute chaos, tight dodges, teleporting blindly into new territory, and trying to find that one boss-killing wand to finish the game as quickly as possible.

If you're an exploration type, ignore the usual seven zones and explore the world around you! Find out what's at the bottom of the pit to the right of the lava lake, what's outside to the left of the tree, or to the right of the mountain. Journey into the sky, or fight your way beneath the temple of the art to see what my lurk there. Traverse impossibly thick walls on either side of the map and see what might be on the other side. Fight optional bosses with unique mechanics and rewards. Discover strange quest items and try to figure out what to do with them. Learn the secrets of alchemy and be blessed with endless health and wealth.

If you're a completionist type, you'll be interested in what's at the top of the tree - pillars of meta-progress that grow as you unlock more endings, more spells, and more challenges. I myself plan on doing a NG+28 33-orb run at some point. I expect that run to take *weeks*, and to think that one drop of polymorphine can end that run is a scary but exciting prospect that will keep me on my toes the entire time!

If you're a mad scientist type, wand building is where it's at. There are so many spells with so many spell combinations in the game that you will be hard pressed to get a win with the same wand twice. Sure, there are repeating themes: homing mist wand, trigger chainsaw wands, speedy bouncing burst wands... but in the end, you get to craft your own tools of destruction from what you find in the game, and that's one of the most rewarding things about this game.

So overall, my recommendation for new players is to expect the game to be challenging and hard. If you're going into this blind you are going to die, quite possibly hundreds of times, before you get a win. If this is not your style, this game may not be for you. But if you're willing to learn everything the game has to offer, you will be rewarded with a rich world of mystery worth exploring, satisfying wands of mass destruction, fulfilling victories against challenging bosses, and the thrill of winning the game on your terms.

That is, in between bouts of stepping in polymorphine and getting one-shot.

Best of luck, noidat!

Overload is a Six Degrees of Freedom first person shooter with a single player story mode, replayable challenge modes with leaderboard, and online multiplayer. If you enjoyed Descent, you will enjoy this. But why? What about this game is special?

1) The Nostalgia

The moment you teleport into Ymir Outpost and start moving around, you already begin to recall the feeling of the original series. The first secret you discover. The first robot that pops out of a secret room after you trigger it. The first time a Scorpion surprises you. The first cryotubes you rescue. The first secret level you find. You will remember everything you loved about the original game as you get introduced to some of the new concepts that Overload brings to the table.

2) The Music

Much of the music of this game comes from Descent music legends Dan Wentz and Allistar Brimble. You'll hear styles from Descent 1 and 2 as you play through the game. But can we talk about Descent 3's Jerry Berlongieri and his absolutely brilliant "Unmanned", the soundtrack to level 14? If there's nothing that gets me, it's music that fits what's going on. Kantor's descent into madness is captured perfectly by this soundtrack, which starts making you, the player, start questioning reality.

3) The Story

The story starts out with you investigating various accidents that happened. As you learn more, you start to feel that things are wrong. This culminates in the level 15 mission briefing, AKA the "Three Queens" story. Everything is PERFECT about this. Not only does this briefing explain everything up to that point, it invokes a level of terror that you'd expect from rounding the corner into a Scorpion. The voice acting on this part is exceptional as well, sends chills up and down the spine.

4) Challenge Modes

And after the story campaign, you can keep playing more with the addictive challenge modes. 12 maps teeming with robots for you to destroy and set high scores on the leaderboards. Try to play as long as you can with infinite, or see how fast you can kill things on countdown mode. It's a simple idea that players love.

While I can't help but glow about the single player experience, the multiplayer experience isn't quite as good. This is largely because multiplayer wasn't intended to be part of the 1.0 release. However, the team at Revival pivoted and decided to add multiplayer to this mix late. This really shows in the disparity between in polish between single player and multiplayer. While it might be difficult to justify criticizing the game for including something that it wasn't planning on, it is no longer Early Access, and needs to be looked at as such.

There are a number of missing features with multiplayer: co-op campaign compatibility, server browsing, joining games in progress, hosting dedicated servers, Hoard CTF & Monsterball game modes that were popular in Descent 3, and a way to observe games in progress (my #1 feature request). It really seems like multiplayer is something that either should have delayed the release of 1.0, or should have been part of a 2.0 release several months down the line. It is not great that multiplayer was released half-or-less-finished.

For playing multiplayer itself, you're forced into playing client-server. There are no peer to peer options, which means that a 50ms swing in ping can be the difference between winning 9-8 and losing 11-20 against the same pilot, just because you had different pings on different servers. The lower your ping, the more what you see is accurate, which means you get a pretty big advantage over someone who is at a higher ping.

Anarchy has a strange points system that rewards 3 points for a kill and 1 point for an "assist", which requires you to do a certain amount of damage right before someone else gets the kill. I very still much believe anarchy should just be based on kills, because now you get situations where games end because someone with 18 kills and 6 assists win over someone with 19 kills and 2 assists.

Don't let this get you totally down about multiplayer. The actual multiplayer games can be quite fun, and as long as you can deal with these nitpicks, you'll still have a good time. No other game outside of the Descent series has a multiplayer that can even be called comparable to that series, so Overload at least has that going for them.

The other thing that Overload has going for them is their exceptional and responsive dev team (edit: See below for update). All those multiplayer nitpicks I discussed above? They're *working* on resolving some of them, and are very good at listening to player feedback when determining what to tackle next. I feel confident knowing that this game will continue to evolve, especially remembering where the closed beta of multiplayer was a month prior to release, and how far it has come since. (Spoiler alert: It was *terrible* back then.)

So if you're looking for an authentic Six Degrees of Freedom single player experience that brings the genre into modern times, I can't recommend this game enough. It even supports both Individual Level and full game speedrunning, has a new game+ mode where the levels change up to add even more difficulty, and has a ton of replayability. Multiplayer feels unfinished, but give it a shot, and if you're not happy with what you see yet, don't be surprised if in an update down the road you see something added that you wanted in the game.

[edit]
I wanted to edit this review because eight months on from release, and not a whole lot has changed with multiplayer. The main nitpicks are still there. There've been some weapon balance passes, but no major change into how multiplayer works.

What's worse is the dev team has gone silent. I have said in a number of places that this now seems like a 2019 indie company thinking like a 1995 corporate studio. I don't know what happened between May and now, but this no longer feels like it's going to get any major updates, and the lack of communication from the dev team on this and other major issues (XBox is *still* unreleased) is frustrating a lot of players.

I still highly recommend the crap out of this game for single player, and the DLC has extended the life of the game for sure. However, it's a shame that the best multiplayer 6DoF game is going on 24 years old this month, and no game in 20 years has managed to even exceed Descent 3's multiplayer.
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[edit2]
Revival Studios is no more, so no more updates will be coming for the game. They did make a v1.1 update to allow for online play without their own servers, but the experience kind of sucks because there were no changes to the net code. So, if you really want to play Overload multiplayer, be sure to check out my Steam guide on olmod to learn how to play multiplayer in olmod. olmod was conceived by Arne de Bruijn, and since has been modified by no less than a dozen other developers who love this game. It has many improvements and quality of life features that have made multiplayer an awesome experience.
[/edit2]

Hey there! Experienced 6DoF player here, and 100%'d the game in just under 2 hours. Here's my feedback/review!

I paid $3.19 for the game (20% off full price), and I believe the price should set expectations for the game. You spend some time figuring out the enemies and the powerups, and quickly realize that everything seems to run on a random system... ammo, health, even damage done to enemies appears to have some factor of random to it. Nice for a roguelike. I liked the geometry of a lot of the rooms, and overall I feel a 6DoF fan will find this fun to play. If you're NOT into 6DoF games, you'll have a lot of trouble with this one, and will be better off picking up a more accessible 6DoF game such as Descent, Overload, or maybe even Retrovirus.

Regarding the bots, first of all, those kamikaze bots are simultaneously the best and worst bots in the game. They are FREAKING TERRIFYING, yet are so perfectly implemented. People are going to hate this bot, but they will hate it because it's so GOOD. Descent had a degree of terror to it playing it casually, those enemies bring that feeling back in a big way.

The bot that fires lightning at you, though, players will hate this bot because it's so BAD. If you don't see it, you can easily lose 30 health before you find it. These are this game's version of Class 1 Drillers from Descent, except several times worse, as they shred your ship apart quickly. At least in a roguelike such as this, that's not bad.

Ironically, the two combo'd together suck, especially if you focus on one of them first and don't see the other, you can easily die from full health or HIGHER.

The others are all fine, entry- to mid-level enemies that after one or two playthroughs won't be a challenge once you identify them.

The filters are harsh. "Toxic" is the best filter least bad of the filters. It allows you to see everything clearly, but it's hard sometimes to see the geometry of the small tunnels, and I absolutely cannot tell the red and blue artifacts apart in that mode.

The lucky shot achivements are just bad filler, and further reinforce the RNG element. I'd remove those, if that's even possible at this point. I got them all without trying.

Finally, the bosses. The first boss was the best, and I was proud to figure that one out in only two attempts.

The second boss I managed to get hit by the outside of the laser grid, and it pushed me out of bounds. I was able to destroy it from outside, and while I figured out the lasers' mechanic, I couldn't for the life of me identify a consistent hit box on the device, and just kept mashing fire and moving around until it died..

The third boss I never triggered any of its attacks. I managed to find a safe place in the level, and just mashed fire until it died.

Overall, I have to say this is what the 6DoF needs... small, game jam type of games that expose players to this genre. 6DoF is a genre that just doesn't get enough love, and to see a title that does this well for the price is pretty good. :)