20 Minutes Till Dawn

20 Minutes Till Dawn is an alright game. I reached darkness 5 - a slightly harder difficulty level after every successful 20 minute run - using different combos of characters and guns, before my interest started to wane. I decided to try this game after reading it was a great example of synergies in weapons and upgrades in the game - and I agree! A lot of interesting overlap between bullet damage, your health, extra protective buffs, your move speed, and 'summons' which cover a wide variety of upgrades with unique effects (I especially liked the ‘lens’ upgrade which rotates around your character and increases the damage of bullets that travel through it, you can auto-lock onto enemies but this upgrade rewards you for your positioning and aim). That said, after the 6-8 runs it took me to reach 'darkness 5' I feel like I've seen most of what this game has to offer. Don’t get me wrong - there’s still content I haven’t seen, like some of the synergy upgrades, the unique weapon upgrades, and the abilities of the characters I haven’t unlocked. But, since there's not really anything to do in the maps or meta progression outside the upgrade (rune?) tree, which offers things like '+2% dodge chance per level' I feel like I wouldn't have as much fun reaching for the highest level of difficulty like in some other games. I believe you can’t have permanent upgrades from the same row (there are a few rows of upgrades in the 2 upgrade trees) so you could find a ‘build’ you like. It’s not an overall strength increase like in Vampire Survivors, but most of the upgrades seem generally applicable for most characters. In the 3 maps the biggest difference is mostly just which bosses and basic enemies spawn. The projectile shooting enemies and bosses have a few different attack patterns to give them variety, mostly around how the projectiles move, but it’s not quite interesting enough for me. Overall 20 Minutes Till Dawn is good for a couple of hours. Even better if you're doing something else like paying half-attention in class, then maybe it might be just stimulating enough for you to want to push through all the difficulty levels. Withholding the promised ‘update’ I heard about, I think I've had enough here.