Nongunz: Doppelganger Edition

This game tells you almost nothing about how to play it. This is perhaps fashionable in a roguelite, but this takes it to a pretty comical extreme. Example: the first time I decided to stop playing, I couldn't figure out how to exit. I legitimately had to look up a guide to find out how to quit the game. Another example of the game's ambivalence to whether or not you enjoy it is that the default gun is semiautomatic, so a room full of enemies will require you to click the mouse or right bumper something like three hundred times in very rapid succession. You can't aim your gun, so you have to just run in front of enemies and clickclickclick as fast as you can, hoping to burst them down before they hit you, until your forearm gets sore. If you're playing with a controller it will also vibrate every time you shoot. Thankfully, the vibration can be disabled, but it's hidden behind two sets of cryptic icons. I had to look up how to do this too. I feel like what the game is trying to accomplish with all of its obscurity is avoiding holding the player's hand in any way. In some sense the absolute commitment to this idea is sort of admirable, but it was just taken much too far. Finding the 'exit' button should not be a Hero's Journey. Beyond my difficulties in learning how to play (and exit) the game, it's pretty good after you read a guide. The game mechanics are good and are an interesting experiment in reducing the number of 'currencies' in a roguelite to the absolute minimum. It goes without saying that I stood absolutely no chance of understanding it on my own. Character and enemy design is fairly inspired, and the level design is quite good. The sound design is a low point. This is the game equivalent of people who purposefully get terrible haircuts to make their drivers license pictures look bad. Sure, it is in some sense courageous, but in a way that nobody cares about. Overall I think it's worth picking up, but just look up a guide.