Nongunz: Doppelganger Edition
Nongunz at first just looks like your everyday shooty-platformer-roguelike but… it does very interesting and unique things that change the usual dynamics for these games, e.g. it uses some kind of idle economy that lets you buy stuff before starting a run based on the amount of prisoners you have liberated on previous attempts or it lets you bail out in the middle of a run while keeping the items you’ve found so you can start over with them, encouraging farming…
It gets weirder though and the more you look at it the weirder stuff you are going to find, especially since it’s intentionally very obscure and it takes time to decypher some of the stuff that is going on. I think it’s definitely worth a shot if someone is interested in how this kind of mash-up can affect a pretty known genre like the roguelike and it definitely becomes its own thing with these additions. I enjoyed it a lot.
– Real player with 46.5 hrs in game
Read More: Best Action Roguelike 2D Games.
Nongunz: Doppelganger Edition released recently, and I wanted to post a positive review about it. I dont actually have much more to say other than I feel like this version is more fine tuned than the original in a few different ways. The game seems at least a little bit more accessible, even if this new version does have a bit more bugs than the original release.
The things id like to point out specifically in why I like the game are mostly style choices, sound and visual design seemed dark and unique at the time, and very minimal game systems in play made for a unique experience for this indie title when it first released years ago.
– Real player with 29.2 hrs in game
Tallowmere 2: Curse of the Kittens
THIS IS THE BEST. GAME. EVER. No hyperbole, no exaggeration, no lie. I would have said that for Developer Chris McFarland’s first Tallowmere, where I have over 1300 hours playing, by far the most of the nearly 2000 Games I own on Steam…but his Tallowmere 2 scratched every itch for a second game I didn’t even realize I itched for. Not only masterful, and a perfect improvement on the Original, IMHO, but you get to a point where you can play reflexively; eliminates stress, pain and any downfall while making for a challenging, exhilarating second outing. Pandemic? Tallowmere 2. Bonkers US Election? Tallowmere 2. Worst Year ever? Best Game ever. I’d gained 200 hours playing the Tallowmere 2 Demo, prior to the long-awaited E.A. Release Dec. 4th…and it STILL feels like new. I suppose it could be worse that the biggest shining, glowing Event of the Year is the release of a Game, rather than some personal accomplishment…but then…this Game really is THAT good! Too bad I couldn’t Nominate THIS game a week prior to its' release. IT’S. REALLY. THAT. GOOD. (UPDATE- NOV 2021- I DID NOMINATE THIS GAME FOR 2021 GAME OF THE YEAR!! So, I DID get my chance to Nominate what I STILL adamantly maintain is the BEST. GAME. EVER.!!!! My play-time since I wrote this review should speak for itself, too :) I hope y’all have found as much enjoyment with Tallowmere 2 as I have :) )
– Real player with 283.7 hrs in game
Read More: Best Action Roguelike 2D Platformer Games.
I’ve wrenched myself away from Tallowmere 2: Curse of the Kittens in order to proclaim it a bloody triumph. “Wrenched” is both completely honest & a total lie: I’d’ve played for another three hours straight with nary a pause for any reason – mind-blowing sex included – if I’d not been brutally murdered the second I thought, “I am now an unstoppable god.”
I’m already itching to duel katanas again, so I’ll make this as quick as I am in bed & hopefully return for a more thorough review at a later date. Suffice it (for now) to say that fans of clever quick roguelikes are in for a treat. Fans of beautiful pixel art are also in for a treat. Fans of violence & gore are similarly in for a chunky, oozing treat.
– Real player with 112.3 hrs in game
Death Road to Canada
I discovered this game from a silly streamer playing it. It looked very goofy and also a lot of fun so I thought I give it a try also. Well I have to say I am rather shocked how many hours I ended up putting into it, it is honestly one of my all time favorite games. So here is a review from someone who has some “modest” amount of experience in the game.
Your goal is to reach this magical place of legend called Canada that for whatever reason is still safe in the zombie apocalypse. So it is up to your EXTREMELY COMPETENT AND TRUSTWORTHY characters to survive.
– Real player with 200.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best Action Roguelike Pixel Graphics Games.
I’ve been having a lot of fun with this game, and I’ve been having trouble putting it down. Death Road To Canada is basically Oregon Trail in a zombie apocalypse with a quirky sense of humor that you can easily sink hours into playing. While RNG plays a big role in the game, your skill can turn a bad run around and make a good run last all the way to Canada.
Pros:
+The gameplay is well executed, and there’s loads of variety. While the game is somewhat difficult, you’re given many tips and pointers when progressing to help you improve your strategy and create characters that will get you to Canada. If you’re looking for a challenge, there’s multiple hard modes that push you to the limit, such as having the trip take twice as long or even having double the zombies throughout the entire journey.
! I will beat KEPA mode someday. When fighting zombies, the outcome is reliant on your skill and what you can do with the materials at hand - sure, the game’s much easier if you have an automatic weapon and a lot of ammo, but you have to use it wisely as not only is it quick to use up your stock but also you’re limited on how much you can carry for each gun. Being able to create yourself, family, friends, and characters from different forms of media makes the game a lot more enjoyable and leads to lots of different outcomes and situations.
– Real player with 108.3 hrs in game
Last Encounter
I had originally written a negative review for this game. There were some balance/quality of life issues that were driving me nuts and really muddied my enjoyment of the game, and i cited that if adjustments were made then the game would be much more enjoyable.
And guess what? The dev team for this game listened. They have already patched it and made positive changes and I am stunned and happy to see this.
The framework for this game is fantastic - your ship is fun to pilot and weapons are somewhat morphic based on the upgrades you collect, there is good enemy variety and the overall actual gameplay is solid. It is fun to experiment with the various pilots and ships to see what style fits best, and it has a ton of potential overall. On top of this i really like the level design and the small touches in the background like the paralax scrolling, its a great design.
– Real player with 24.3 hrs in game
Last Encounter has some neat ideas and mechanics, but it just doesn’t quite work, is severely underexplained, and feels at least a little unfinished. It’s interesting to play, and if you’re tolerant, can make a fair side game to better roguelites, so it’s not a hard pass.
You start a run selecting a pilot and ship, with different attributes and an activated special ability. Those aren’t particularly interesting, to be frank, but the game has a neat weapon system where your shot is determined by three components you can individually interchange right in mid-fight, but in practice, seems like you don’t really get to make a lot of use of this, so it’s just kind of there much of the time. Still, cute idea, and it adds some interest to the otherwise pedestrian twin-stick style top-down shooting. You explore and clean large hexagonal spaces collecting keys to open the exit to move on to the next major zone. Each zone has a theme and style, but sadly the enemies and hazards tend to feel more like nuisances than interesting enemies, and there’s some obnoxious design here (like zone three, where you’ll find enemies who can and will simply focus a laser on you, doing continuous non-negligible damage until you destroy them, but they don’t go down fast, and there can be environment obstacles around which they can shoot through but you cannot, and you also have enemies who will hinder you and move you around). You sometimes, but not always, fight a boss after a zone, and these are lengthy, tedious affairs.
– Real player with 9.9 hrs in game
I Hate Running Backwards
As a huge Croteam fan boy, i confess i bought this game kinda blindly, knowing it had serious sam messy action vibes, but havent a clue about the gameplay.
And what a good surprise. The gameplay is quickly understood and you’ll find yourself wanting to play once more, each time you loose the game.
About the gameplay itself, it is difficult for me to compare to it to something. The screen is moving downwards and loads of ennemies will come to you from the bottom of the screen, while obstacles, weapons and bonuses will come from top. Levels beeing generated rather randomly, each game will be different, you will not find the same weapons from game to game, and level uping your character will never go the same way, as you have to choose one from three random upgrades each time you level up. Your level beeing remived each time you loose. One run you will be tankier with special weapons upgrades, the next time you went for a quicker character with dodging abilities.
– Real player with 33.7 hrs in game
I’m a write a review for this game, trying to be completely honest. Here goes:
Graphics:
- graphics are very good, very ‘tunable in options, but the art style is not my preffered one (blocky characters, cartoony shaders etc.. ). Effects are really nice, composed out of many smaller effects to grant big ones (which looks very nice). The only con i have is the collisions polygons (which are technical but a good eye can see them), sometimes a thing hits you or kills you without even touching you (even though you are close). Not a big issue since you have to git gud and you can avoid it all. I’d rate graphics 8/10, even though they deserve 9/10 (due to me not being a fan of the artstyle).
– Real player with 24.2 hrs in game
Kungfu Cowboy
I stumbled upon KFCowboy when I was browsing Steam for new games to play. The game title first caught my attention because it sounded unique and funny and the game looked quite fun from the trailer too.
I would best describe the game as a mix of Celeste-like platforming with bullet-hell action of Enter The Gungeon. You’re constantly fighting enemies and dashing thru spiked platforms while avoiding getting hit. The gameplay is quite challenging, but I like that the runs are fairly short so it never feels tiring when going for another one. You gain exp the more you play and you are able to unlock new weapons with exp. Each weapon has it’s own unique boosts and you are able to stack different ones together to create different builds so it adds a lot of depth and replayability. The enemy variety is great and there’s even some friendly NPCs that you meet along the way that help you out. Also, the music in the game SLAPS. It’s catchy and has a western/Chinese vibe to it.
– Real player with 13.4 hrs in game
Great game to play with friends. You can choose to play the roguelike run mode (PVE) or arena style shooter mode (PVP). The run mode is pretty chill and it took me and my friends a couple of hours to beat the game. We unlocked hard mode, which is the regular mode but ON STEROIDS. The platforming and enemies are way harder, but I quite like the challenge. Each weapon has their own unique upgrades which makes the game play very differently from run to run. The PVP arena mode is so much fun too. It’s definitely a lot more fun the more people you have so I recommend playing with at least 4 players. There’s online matchmaking, but I think the player base is still quite small so I wasn’t able to matchmake with other players. I highly suggest grabbing this game with a few buddies for the PVP.
– Real player with 10.7 hrs in game
Legend of Dungeon
Not Quite Legendary
Legend of Dungeon = Roguelite-lite + Commodore 64 + Rainbow Vomit
This game reminds me of action games back on the ol’ Commodore 64. I make this reference even though I know it will plainly sail straight over the heads of most of you youngsters, making me feel like the aging and increasingly irrelevant gaming hipster that I am. sigh
Uh, anyway. The premise of this game is very Rogue. IE - Journey to the bottom of the randomly generated dungeon to collect the frazzledazzled THING and return for ultimate glory. Unlike Rogue, it is very light on the RPG mechanics. You collect glowing experience orbs from fallen enemies and gain levels which translates into direct health and damage increases. There is no stat or skill management whatsoever.
– Real player with 33.5 hrs in game
Legend of Dungeon is a permadeath roguelike dungeon-crawler game. Every time you play, it is a different dungeon. It is never the same dungeon unless you input the same seed. The objective of this game, you need to navigate your way down to level 26 to grab a treasure and bring it back to level 0 to complete the game. You will come across a variety of monster mobs and 7 different bosses to kill. Once you grab a treasure at level 26, heading back to level 0, you’ll find difficult mobs existing at all levels. This is identical to Impossible mode except it is not that way at start. The difficulty of this game is relatively easy (considering my guide) but there is Impossible mode where you’ll deal with potential powerful monster mobs right away starting Level 1 instead of deep in the dungeon.
– Real player with 30.8 hrs in game
Machina Blade
In Machina Blade what matters the most is your skill. Inspired by games such as Dead Cells, Risk of Rain and Devil May Cry, Choose a character and explore a mysterious, ever-changing floating island while fighting your way through hordes of Machinas with up to four players on local co-op.
A secret lies in the heart of this island. You seek answers, but in your way lies hordes of deadly Machinas that won’t hesitate to fight you. Find chests containing powerful treasures that will help you along the way. Keep going until you fall and die… and eventually rise to try again.
MAIN FEATURES
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Responsive and fun combat system that will test your skills and reflexes
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Various characters with different playstyles
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Over 50 items that will change how you approach new challenges
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Dozens of enemies, with powerful bosses to face off against
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3 challenging boss fights, with more to come
Stones of Sorrow
Read the store page, view the video, and you will have a good grip on the premise of this game. Now check the controls and go get those stones. You will need one for each hand to smash your blood brother’s head in properly.
Wow what a great Developer. All of my pin points below have been addressed and are no longer issues as of this past update(1.1.2) and it has been Less than a week. The movement even feels more fluid. I ran into a couple random issues… but I have screenshot them with descriptions. I’m curious to see how much gametime it will take to max out my perks :)
– Real player with 13.0 hrs in game
This game will blow your mind! Like, where else can you play a game so innovative like that? Cave paintings killing each other, a cool variety of items and, in the middle, a story well arranged and nicely told? Holy crap! You’ll say “why didn’t I play this gem before?” (ps: you’ll die a lot, but that won’t keep your hands off the controller. You’ll beg for more or, should I say, beg for gore?)
I’ve already “finished” Stones of Sorrow 4 or 5 times and now I’m in for the achievements, mainly ‘cause this state of the art item of human badassery -both the pre-historic cave art/21st game development- totally deserves it.
– Real player with 7.6 hrs in game
Super Mutant Alien Assault
Update almost a year later: Still awesome, buy immediately.
tl;dr
Super Mutant Alien Assault is an unashamed Super Crate Box clone, and with good reason: it’s every bit as addicting as it’s paragon, but adds it’s own twists.
words
Super Mutant Alien Assault is an arcade platformer shooter, where you play a tiny robot combating an onslaught of mutant aliens. The controls are solid (the only gripe I have is not being able to remap the d-pad to make the pad controls mimic the keyboard controls), the graphics are excellent some of the best art I’ve seen in a long while. The music is okay and the sounds are passable.
– Real player with 85.8 hrs in game
IN A NUTSHELL:
Super Mutant Alien Assault is a frantic roguelite with a huge selection of weapons and items, all wrapped up in a beautiful pixel art package and made even better by the addition of couch co-op.
I’m told that Super Mutant Alien Assault is a lot like Super Crate Box, but since I haven’t played SCB (and maybe you haven’t either), I’ll give you a quick rundown on the idea of Super Mutant Alien Assault:
The game is broken down into 3 zones (each comprised of 3 regular levels followed by a boss fight). Every level randomly presents you with one of a handful objectives ranging from surviving until a timer runs out, to shutting off devices before they catastrophically overheat, to retrieving fuel rods from one part of the map and depositing them in another location. Along the way, you’re beset by a variety of enemies (the titular aliens) and, true to form, “game over” is a single death away.
– Real player with 36.3 hrs in game