Tower Hunter: Erza’s Trial
A good game with broken mechanics.
Mostly simple, kill hordes of enemies and move forward. The game doesn’t really help with any direction on things that can be done, it’s mostly up to us which means a player can probably go through the entire game without knowing some very basics mechanics that can be done. There is hardly anything in the game to read or explore more on, sometimes even the minuscule help it offers will be hard to understand. One simply has to hope they understood the message it conveys.
– Real player with 47.7 hrs in game
Read More: Best Action Roguelike Roguelite Games.
### ”A potential rogue-like metroidvania where the death is learning…“
Tower Hunter: Erza’s Trial is a mixture of metroidvania and rogue-like element developed by indie IceSea Team of two people. It adapts into side-scrolling game with the influence of soul-like mainstream. Yet still have some flaws and require polishing during Early Access (currently 3 playerable levels). It’s risk-reward fun for people who seek a challenge.
Story and Presentation
Set in the hybrid fantasy world with some modern tech elements, the world design is clean, well-produced texture, and colorful. You play as a young maiden named “Erza”who specialize in close combat and ice spells. She has to prove herself by conquering mysterious tower to prove hunter’s license and get rid of wedding plan. The story is simple and straightforward, but what lies on the top of tower is quite intriguing. You spend most of time chatting with Devil companion between the levels as I hope they develop relationship through the story.
– Real player with 42.6 hrs in game
Beacon
Updated Added 3/24/2019
Keep in mind this is a game still in beta phase, so it’s not quite finished. I’ll likely update my review as Beacon continues development.
I absolutely love top-down shooters and Beacon is no exception, in fact, it makes me appreciate them more. I’ve stuck around playing since it was released on Itch. It’s changed quite a lot, such as additions of enemies and bosses, loot areas, and of course all the bug-squashing, both technical and literal. It’s a little terrifying that there’ll be even more enemies and bosses later, which means plenty more ways to die, but hey, mutations are a thing.
– Real player with 68.5 hrs in game
Read More: Best Action Roguelike Procedural Generation Games.
Beacon has a nice low-poly artsyle, a pretty good soundtrack, and interesting writing and ideas. It has some weird design choices regarding weapons and enemies, but is over-all rewarding, if not occasionally frustrating due to a few enemies.
The gameplay is pretty typical: you can use 2 guns, have 1 equipment, 1 consumable/held passive, a grenade type, and as many passive non-held items as you want. You can smack things and dodge-roll, too.
The big game idea is that, when you die, you use DNA pickups you collect from enemies and can “mutate” next run… Or you can do what I did and beat it without mutating, which is pretty doable. Mutations change how the character looks/acts/stats and how the character reacts to items and story elements.
– Real player with 48.6 hrs in game
ReversEstory
After playing the mobile version (which is great by the way), this definitely feels easier but also more fun with some added movement options. It’s a fast paced shooter/platformer with some replay-ability and different characters each with their own playstyles and bosses. Overall, not too heavy on the bullet hell aspect.
The translations to English isn’t perfect, but still understandable and the UI was clearly designed with mobile in mind and could use some adaptation to PC/controller/mouse.
– Real player with 6.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Action Roguelike 2D Games.
Coming from the free mobile release, I’m gonna say it right here: the PC version did not meet my expectation. I do recommend the game still if you can go past the issues, or at least play the mobile version.
The controls just hardly translate well from touch screen to controller (or keyboard). Also, since the game got no way to change your controller deadzone, it’s very easy to have the experience messed up by a very slight drift of your joystick, making your character jump in a direction even doe you want him to jump without moving.
– Real player with 0.6 hrs in game
Gimmick in the Chaos Dimension
Fun little maze climber. Each enemy has their own behavior type and learning what to do in each situation and which powerups to use to get as far as possible is satisfying!
– Real player with 5.5 hrs in game
Gimmick in the Chaos Dimension is a delightful romp back to the times of coin-op arcade games. Times where you put in a quarter, went until you died, then did it again. Except now there’s also skills that you can level up between games! Nothing could stop me from unlocking every achivement. I streamed it for hours. There’s even record keeping of your best runs! I can’t wait to see what they do next, and look forward to the next Gimmick game!
– Real player with 5.4 hrs in game
The Madness of Little Emma
The Madness of Little Emma is one of those games that was compared to another (in this case, The Binding of Issac), and that caused me to skip it for a while. Luckily, I ended up picking this up on impulse during a sale, and I have found that I like it a lot.
Now, there are some parallels to Issac, in that you have a character with a tragic backstory going a bit crazy, a plethora of characters to choose from, randomly generating maps, and loads of items you can collect. The thing that seperates it is that it becomes its own game as you play, with everything from the sidescrolling layout to the types of items keeping you wanting to play.
– Real player with 42.7 hrs in game
I was on the fence for positive/negative on this one… I’m going thumbs down.
aside Why don’t we get a scale 1-5 or something, Steam? C’mon! /aside
It’s like the creator wanted to make Binding of Isaac, but that was already done:
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Play in a series of increasingly deep basement rooms and floors? Check.
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Lots of random power-ups that can have synergistic effects? Check.
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Big Boss to fight at the end of the floor? Check.
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Body fluids as weapons? Check.
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Treasure chests, coins, and bombs? Check.
– Real player with 38.9 hrs in game
AIRHEART - Tales of broken Wings
On a flight
Airheart is the story of Amelia, a young pilot and fisher woman who lives in a world among the clouds, Amelia fishes through dangerous skies collecting scrap in order to upgrade her plane and avoiding pirates all in the hope of one day making the catch of a lifetime and you are tasked with guiding Amelia on her journey.
That’s really as deep as the game got in the time that I spent with it but that’s all you really need to keep motivated in order to move forward within the game.
– Real player with 22.6 hrs in game
In A Nutshell
Airheart is a roguelike shooter telling the story of Amelia, a young pilot with the objective of reaching the stratosphere to capture a legendary whale, and honor the inheritance received by her father.
The game world is made of several layers, and your home, Granaria, will be on the lowest one. From there, with your at first weak plane, you will need to go around each layer, catching fish to make money, avoiding or destroying progressively stronger enemies on each level, find the elevator platforms to reach the next layer, and also eventually find secret components hidden in boxes around the various floating islands. Each four levels, you will meet a Boss, then once defeated, transition to a new biome, with a different season and appearance to it, different fish, enemy types, and dangers.
– Real player with 11.5 hrs in game
Blamdown: Udder Fury
Had a lot of fun with this game!
I would definitely recommend it, great art, explosions and puns to last me a lifetime.
Bit longer story would have been nice but I could (and probably will) play this all night long with the survival mode and highscore.
– Real player with 8.0 hrs in game
Blamdown: Udder Fury is a twin-stick shooter. It’s has story mode and a survival mode in which all you do is cause chaos. Think Just Cause 2 but with a cow instead of Rico and top down instead of third person. Game is very fun if you want to just sit back and relax as it doesn’t take itself too seriously.
Graphics:
Blamdown: Udder Fury’s graphics are decent. They’re nothing too special but sort of pleasing to the eyes. It has those blocky type textures and from a top down view they look pretty neat. The environment is fully destructible and the maps are pretty big for a top down shooter. In addition to that you get these comic book type words like “Blam”, “Kaboom” and other such words, these look very good as well. There were no problems in FPS and the game played very smoothly. There were a few graphical glitches but then again the game is in Early Access, so hopefully those will be sorted out eventually.
– Real player with 7.5 hrs in game
Chenso Club
The alien invaders are everywhere, attacking everything and everyone! And when they die, the life-force they leave behind is an ultra-incredible energy source! Is there any hope?
Meet the Chenso Club: a growing group of fighters here to save the world. They’re using the aliens’ life-force to power up and beat them at their own game. Don’t let their adorable nature fool you - they will happily and brutally obliterate any threat that gets in their way.
Meet Blue, a powerful android developed in a lab where an alien discovery was used to ultra-boost her power. Her weapon of choice is a mean chainsaw and a charmingly destructive attitude.
Carmine is a highly-trained member of the royal guard, tasked with protecting the King. After a surprise alien attack, her King is now being held hostage and her honor demands that she save the day. Her weapon of choice is a giant hammer, infused with the power of alien essence. Her activity of choice is destroying aliens every chance she gets.
Plum’s favorite hobby is trying out different kinds of witchcraft. This bubbly character spends most of her day at the abandoned clock tower. What she doesn’t know is that the clock tower is now haunted by creepy monsters from another universe!
Remember! The Chenso Club is growing - so more characters are on their way!
Our heroines want any excuse to use their newfound powers. It’s up to you to master their moves, increase their power and show the world the might of the Chenso Club.
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Two game modes (with more to come) - Story mode, where you fight your way through colourful worlds and bosses, as well as Co-op.
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Fight with attitude: The Chenso Club girls are fast witted, strong and adorably violent..
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Punch, jump, slash, and smash: Master the girls’ moves, kick your reflexes into high gear, and battle your way through “old-school challenge” levels to obliterate aliens.
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Test your rogue-lite skill: Procedurally generated levels are different each time you play. No do-overs!
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Collect life force from aliens you kill: Trade for power-ups to make your fighter faster and stronger—but don’t spend it all! That life force also keeps YOU alive.
[*Play solo or with friends: Play solo or indulge the Chenso girls’ competitive nature with couch co-op.[/list]
CYBERUSH
I’m not quite sure what to say about ‘CYBERUSH’, it’s a manga style shooter that is very light on just about everything. You get to pick a choice of 3 weapons which are sword, gun and shotgun and you kill enemies with them then goto the lift up to the next level which seems to be a constant rotation of about 5 office style layouts. From its annoying music to the basic graphics this game is as low quality as they come, but the biggest issue is that it doesn’t really have playability to back it up. Even the money I collected in the game seemed to be for nothing. This is certainly not something I would recommend for £7.19, but if some issues get fixed it might be worth a quid or two. https://youtu.be/httvkuexin4
– Real player with 0.5 hrs in game
Leyline Knights
If you like Roguelikes like Hades, you’d enjoy this. A couple of patches can get it working well cause I did encounter a couple a couple of bugs (in fact I only stopped playing because of one). I didn’t quite understand what are the things you select before you start the “Dungeon Run” but its fun. Managed to fight (and not always defeat) a couple of bosses which from my experience in 1 hour of play were all different so that nice. Also I have no idea how you can get back with your gems, I wanted to buy some permanent buffs but when I died I always lost everthing (not sure if intentional but usually you get to keep a small percentage if you don’t make it till the end)
– Real player with 2.3 hrs in game
I’d recommend this game, it’s a nice action roguelike game with a nice replayability value through the possibilty of different builds.
Your goal is to climb the Great Tree to do so you’ll fight enemies through different areas and maps and fight your way against bosses.
You have access to numerous upgrades,items and combining various elements to help you through it and advance to the next level of an area.
You’ll encounter NPCs that will help you and tell you a bit more on the lore.
You can also tailor your playstyle with the purchase of upgrades and such.
– Real player with 1.2 hrs in game