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 Procedural Generation Space 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
Starlight Explorers
It’s a fun way to learn about gravity and orbits, with a story designed to welcome a younger audience to those concepts. Beyond that, the simple aim-and-release gameplay is versatile enough to range from a meditative squiggle-drawing activity to a fiendish spatial-reasoning challenge.
– Real player with 2.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best Procedural Generation Space Games.
The game is very relaxing and satisfying when you find the right trajectory. For me, Starlight really shines toward the middle of the story missions where the planets are no longer shown and you must find them through their gravitation pull.
– Real player with 1.5 hrs in game
Dragon Fin Soup
DRAGON FIN SOUP
“A world of murders” - (2015)
Review is based on the Story Mode.
Game type: Tactical RPG with some roguelike elements (if you play in Hard Mode).
Newbies may consider the game as a hack’n’slash turn based. (trust me: don’t do this mistake, you will be frustated).
1st :issue which could potentialy ruin your experience
I absolutly discourage to play in hard mode (ie : you die once & it’s over) : If the game crashes (and it could) , savegame is potentialy corrupted and you will encounter crashes over crashes at random interval . As a result the game become unplayable (the game saves your progress NOT separatly, so you coudn’t choose a prior save point : that’s pretty stupid). Ohter reason the game is challenging.
– Real player with 243.4 hrs in game
Read More: Best Procedural Generation RPG Games.
To sum up: It looks good but feels wrong. It feels like a casual game and a bad port and something that could be fun.
I hope the devs polish this a lot. The PC release needs to play well on a PC.
Let’s start with some basic things, controls. Though the devs have stated that the pc is their primary platform, they don’t play by longstanding pc conventions. What do you expect ‘esc’ to do in a game for pc? Nothing? Oh, wait, it exits menus, but does not bring up an options menu with load and save and most importantly - quit?! How about “alt-tab'? In full screen, nothing, nada, zilch. That’s not right. In a roguelike, dungeon crawler, rpg, etc, pushing the “i” key should bring you to your inventory. And it should be customisable. These are only a few of the issues. All in all it feels like a bad port made primarily for gamepads or touchscreens. I play with mouse and keyboard and have the option of a touchscreen. Touchscreen is too tedious and not precise enough for the action. Mouse and keyboard are awkward. Moving by mouse click will have you fined your hard earned gold when you accidentally cut down city trees (Protip: some things are worth smashing in town once you have some money to pay for it). Moving by WASD and QEZC for diagonals is much better, with enter for attacking the selected target, though that requires the occasional mouse use to point your character in the right direction. For a game that require precision to survive, the controls don’t always allow it. Then there’s the camera…
– Real player with 30.2 hrs in game
Miasma Caves
The gameplay of Miasma Caves is very simple: Explore a cave, find treasure, escape alive to sell said treasure in town, repeat.
The Cons:
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No Automap (for an exploration game this is a huge drawback)
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Intermediate cave levels are a bottleneck in difficulty (rocks fall, everybody
diesfaints) -
Not much of a story
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A few minor bugs
The Pros:
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Over 150 different treasure items of 4 different categories
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Town can be developed
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A lot of variety in available tools, which allows for different approaches of exploration.
– Real player with 150.1 hrs in game
I have played enough Miasma Caves to recommend it. You play a dragon-lady who spelunks a procedurally-generated cave in search of treasure and you’re a pacifist, so that means that you don’t attack any of the monsters inside. But you still can get hurt (such as from cave-ins, and falls, and the titular miasma), and there’s still a challenge in seeing how far you can go whilst getting out alive! It’s a fun game and I recommend it to anyone, especially those who loved Leila “Woofle” Wilson’s soundtrack in Freedom Planet; some of the greatness in that soundtrack is carried over in this game.
– Real player with 41.3 hrs in game
Umbraseal
All enemy shoot bullets like crazy! 《Umbraseal》is a bullet-hell dungeon crawler top-down shooter.
Use shadow ability to fight back between bullet and bullet, or gain advantage by unique bullet. Beware, even weakest enemy may shoot fatal bullet pattern.
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bullet-hell + dungeon crawler - grounded : This game provides intense bullet fight, replayability and removing area limitation for battle. But there are more danger after freedom.
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Everyone has bullet pattern : We love boss shoots pretty bullet pattern, now minions also have some.
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Shadow Ability : Shadow can shoot, cancel out bullet and deal heavy area damage on enemy. Use various shadow abilities to against your enemies.
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Unique Bullet : Player can equipment up to 3 unique bullets. Each one provides surprising effect.
Danger Forever
Danger Forever is hardcore 3D scroll-shooter with rogue-lite elements.
_ Lone human rides her mecha-dragon
through hostile alien world of mechanoids and techno-demons_
Unlike most scrolling shooters, you actually fly through 3D environment — use it to your advantage, and beware bumping into walls or ground.
Also, instead of traditional showering enemies with bullets, you have to think ahead a bit — fuel/heat system adds some more depth to combat.
Levels are procedurally generated — each level is slightly different every time you play it
(but it’s not totally random of course).
Energy and materials obtained during level playthrough can be used to upgrade and customize you dragon.
You also need those materials and energy to build a spaceship to fight your way out of that hostile planet.
F E A T U R E S
► Explore over 100 levels in 6 distinct regions
World map is procedurally generated too, you can ’re-roll' your world.
► Utilize elaborate scoring system to earn energy and materials needed for upgrades
The better you score the better gear you can afford.
► Unlock new difficulty modes
On higher difficulty levels you’ll encounter enemies and hazards not present on ‘normal’ or ‘easy’.
► Upgrade and customize your dragon
Abilities and weapon-modes are unlocked and upgraded for Azure and materials earned on levels.
► Challenge yourself on specially designed infinite ‘survival’ levels
Survival levels are ranked on leaderboards.
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
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
Risky Wings
EDIT: 2/26/19 Record name change.
EDIT; 9/11/18 The issues I describe below of needing to acclimate in order to avoid hitting objects has substantially been dealt with admirably in several ways, in more than one update. MUCH more intuitive now. Thank you!
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Full Disclosure: I LOVE TO FLY!!! (As a gamer, I mean.)
As such, I have a substantial number of Steam-based games that allow me to indulge this joyous affliction, the most recent being the wonderfully designed and remarkably addictive and entertaining Risky Wings (previously UBERFLIGHT.) Admittedly, flying games basically do one thing, and the measures of such games are:
– Real player with 17.0 hrs in game
Relax game for reaction training.
– Real player with 13.8 hrs in game
Galactic Refugees
this is a really nice game with pretty widely varied difficulty settings and all original artwork and music. imo it’s simple, easy to pick up and go, and a lot of fun :3
a lot of the characters are cute and quirky, and there is plenty of solid shoot em up/bullet hell content.
– Real player with 0.3 hrs in game
Serenade of the Sirens
Nice and short. Not very hard. Has a nice retro feel.
– Real player with 5.5 hrs in game
Serenade of the Sirens is a mermaid themed roguelite ¯_(ツ)_/¯. I am not entirely sure why I bought it, I guess I just wanted to be a part of that world. Since I did not read the store description, I was surprised to find roguelite mechanics in a swimming game. It has permadeath, procedurally generated levels, and randomized stores with 3 items. Aside from having all the basic elements of this genre, the game does not do anything new to stand out. That being said, the game is just barely decent enough for me not to refund it. At the very least I was able to remap my f310 controller, even though it did not work with the default set up.
– Real player with 2.8 hrs in game