Brigador Killers

Great soundtrack as always. Makeup and Vanity Set never disappoints! Much as I love the first game, don't go in expecting that gameplay loop or level of polish, especially in these early days. Much slower, reminds me of trying to stealth some of the "extra" campaign missions from Brigador. It is punishing, but once you figure out a strategy its definitely doable just don't be afraid to spam the scavenge missions in and out quickly. Once you stockpile a couple sets of your preferred gear, you can breathe a bit easier. Excited to see what else is to come.

[Have something like 20-25 hours in the demo/itch version for the record] Remember all the tiny little guys you stepped on in Brigador? Well now is your chance to be one of those tiny little guys! It's in early access, it still needs quite a bit of work but the basics of what they're going for are here and are great. Tactical isometric action that lets you play extremely chaotically but rewards care and consideration. It's Brigador at a very different scale but with much the same tactical action chaos (now with an inventory to fumble through under fire!), gorgeous grimy art, and the great soundtrack. Vehicles are here but you're no longer locked into them, you can hop in and out and if you want to bring one to a mission you'll need to have either stolen or built it from salvage previously. You have an in-game base you stash equipment at, but anything you take into a mission will be lost if you die. This can be a little frustrating given how flimsy you are to start, but overall I found it an effective pressure to make me try to approach situations carefully and with a degree of planning. Getting caught out by a sneaky shotgunner feels bad the first time but if you let it keep happening to you then that's something you need to learn to account for. As I said at the top, there's a long way to go here. This is not an EA build where it's 95% complete and you should not pick it up expecting that, but there's a decent chunk of fun to be had here and it does give a solid impression of the shape of the final gameplay. The meat is here it's just the connective tissue that needs to be added and filled out. On the actual negative side it does feel like there are a few things that could have been quickly added, a decent number of equipment descriptions are still completely empty placeholders to be declassified in the full version. Most important stuff that you'll use does seem pretty well explained (devs have now made it clear which ammo a gun uses for instance) but certain things could use a tiny explanation (e.g. "it's a throwable shrapnel bomb" or "it works like the backpack but for ammunition"). That said it's not like experimenting isn't fun here or resources are so tight you can't afford to just fabricate something to test it out. A note for those who played the demo and are considering this: The demo progression was a lot faster so the devs could show off more of what you can expect later in the full game. The progression in this EA build is much slower, and I expect closer to what the final game will be like. I don't find this to be a negative, in the demo there were a lot of weapons you'd never end up using because they just seemed incredibly weak and better things were available immediately and in decent amounts. Instead here once you get past the narrative prologue you'll be reduced to throwing rocks at people, so the upgrade to a kind of crappy .22LR pistol does actually feel like advancement rather than a flavourful weapon that lowpower enemies use but you will never touch. The inclusion of so many "chaff" weapons makes more sense when you're actually in a position of being forced to use them.