Ziggurat

You just keep grinding to get to the next level without any theme, story nor goal, just random mushrooms and monsters jumping out from nowhere. Like mobile games, it aims more for addiction than actual content using flashy level up animations. Not being able to continue on a level when dying makes the game feel more inconsistent than a fuzzy dream where nothing makes any sense. Shooting is so slow that it doesn't matter if you try to aim for the head. The only reason for making this type of game is to make more money from ads or pay-to-win systems, so the design decisions doesn't make any sense in a paywalled game, where play time doesn't increase the profit. My review is mostly biased from the fact that I strongly dislike mobile games, and this has the same attributes. The only reason for not giving the lowest score is that it has good language support and some children might be too young for advanced games. I'd give it 3 stars for children and 1 star for adults.

This... sadly sorta plays like a downrent Immortal Redneck. Major problem the first, it does not allow lateral keyboard movement when you're using the sprint key. This is NOT ok in a run around frantically trying to dodge all kinds of randomly spawning monsters in a room game - seriously. Cover tends to be destructible, you can't just hide very often, running around is your only way to attempt to escape being hammered. Neutering sprint so you have to control all lateral movement with the mouse is just plain stupid - sorry but it is. Like introducing negative movement modifiers in a bullet hell game, it's not friggin' helpful. Problem the second, there are a really unpleasant amount of things with homing, movement anticipation, or shotgun projectiles. Once again - often not much cover, good bit of it destructible, often nowhere to hide - died/got heavily damaged quite often when it just felt cheap as hell. Here, have a room you can't hide in, and here's projectiles that are a raving pain to dodge. Awesome...? Artificial difficulty ho! This has an oldschool Nintendo difficulty feel to it, but not in a good way "/ Problem the third, random is just too random. Cards, weapons, etc. vary to the point that I regularly get runs where I'm just going to pretty much suck, on top of the aforementioned, "Well how the hell do you avoid getting pasted here c'mon?" rooms. Heck, even the characters seem to have major balance issues vis a vis one another. That'd be sort of forgivable but on top of everything else... gah. Sad part is this could be cool. It's even sort of cool with the major issues, but it's a swing and miss. Really, really glad I got this on sale - full price I'd be running for a refund. It's a nice concept, and one that's done well before (hate to repeat it but once again see Immortal Redneck) - but crippled by play issues that often make it a stacked as hell against the player experience - once again not even remotely in a good way. This is more like Battletoads-level "WTF?" difficulty, where it's a fistfight against the level gen, shotgun and homing mobs, and the tools you're given rarely feel up to the job. Really wanted to rate this higher - no can do. With a major balance/retuning pass maybe - as is no.

I'm not implying that this game is something inferior or stupid. It's average shooter. I'd go for 3*** if only there was not this horrible unlockables system. Different characters, yay! No, unlock them first. Unlock them by doing arbitrary repetitive quests. Deal X damage with Y type weapon. Kill X creatures (by Y weapon). It seems like developers are just yelling "keep playing this over and over again". Creatures are spawning like #$&@% everywhere. Not literally, but it feels like it. Spawning daemon in your back makes all your positioning useless. Some training might help, though... Game is making you do stupid things in encounters. Like the frog mode - you can only move by jumping. While you read challenge description and while you make your mind how you're going to solve it, first monsters are already approaching. Into Frog challenge game spawns ranged monsters, preferably with shots that follow you round the corner. In a plain flat room. Too much luck-dependent. Another example - damage by staff increased by 50%, all other weapons decreased by 50%. Don't have a staff? Well, good luck then. I don't oppose permadeath. But spawning different boss each pull is just dumb. Wanna train a bit? Here you got totally different boss. There could be some kind of training arena :/ Unavailability to sprint-strafe and sprint not auto-resuming after shooting are minor things compared to listed flaws...

I got this game for free and decided to give it a shot. At first it looked promising with fun gameplay, but then as I progressed through the floors I realized the main way this game had difficulty is to just increase the health, damage, and spawnrate of the enemies which is a lazy and frustrating way to increase difficulty. However the ideas have potential and if they're incorperated into another game without the bullet sponges I think it could do pretty well.

Even on easy this is just stupid. Stupid batshit crazy hard. It does take some of the fun out this otherwise ok roguelike FPS shooter. I recommend another similar game in style to this, "Immortal Redneck", instead. This will just have you going bald years before your time! :D