Cthulhu's Reach: Devil Reef

it honestly feels like play CyberDogs on DOS again, ♥♥♥♥ yeah dude

The game looks fun, but in co-op due to the 'ready' button only appearing the host, the run stops there and both player needs to alt+F4. Too bad, really. Other than that it is probably a lot of fun. I tried the beta branch version, but both ended with the same issue. Good luck solving the issue!

I wish I could get a refund for this game. When I bought it, I had a lot of fun with it. It was tough, but it was a balanced experience that was fun and chill to explore. Every update they have made since its launch has made this game worse and worse. The writing was on the wall as soon as they implemented Stamina aka the lousy game's crutch mechanic. I stepped away for a while and just came back to it to see a bunch of updates. Oh boy, lets see how bad they trashed this game now. Lo and behold, I can no longer unlock shotguns or the tommy gun. I'm stuck with the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ pistol, and all the unlocks for it do a minimal and I mean MINIMAL amount of improvements. There's only so much you can improve the pistol before you reach the first boss, the Watcher, so buckle up for that. The Watcher battle is INCREDIBLY annoying; his life bar is massive, fine. He's a boss. BUT he spawns the worm enemies who are immune to guns, so guess what? You're going to have to hack away at them with the axe which is going to drain your stamina. Oh there's that crutch mechanic again... Once your stamina is 0, you can't do anything, can't shoot these things, can't roll out of the bullet hell projectiles the Watcher spews, you're doomed. Well, I managed to break the Watcher's health down to the last quadrant, but then he goes ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ with the bullet hell spam. You have NO recourse when this happens; he still spawns worms that you have to kill with the axe, but now you HAVE to roll out of the way from the projectiles too. You simply cannot get close enough to the watcher to shoot him and the second a moment of opportunity arises, the worms spawn and you have to axe them again lest they GRAB you and keep you in place for the unrelenting bullet hell. Again, this things health bar was massive, and all the money I could scrounge only let me upgrade the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ pistol so much, once I finally got him down to his last boss cycle, I had already spent nearly 20 minutes on the ONE fight. I have zero desire to attempt again, there isn't anything else I can do, you won't be able to get past the crippling stamina mechanic in that fight. If he spawned slimes then maybe it would be more managable since you could at least use the guns on them (and they only slow you instead of freezing you entirely) but honestly I'm not sticking around for another ♥♥♥♥♥♥ update. I REALLY wish I could get my money back. Imagine buying Super Mario 3 on the NES and every time you play it, it changes into a worse and worse experience. Would it still be revered as a masterpiece? I just wanted to chill in this game a bit before work and now I'm angry at the state of modern game development where my hard earned money is taken from me on a literal bait and switch and I have no recourse. Maybe the current iteration of this game speaks to you, fine. Just don't hold out hope that it's going to remain that way on the next update. ***UPDATE*** Okay I have to admit... while I back every word of my review, I wrote it in a time of high hostility. I have since read the developer's thoughtful response to my irate ramblings and I appreciated the thought an effort. So after having stepped away for a while, I decided to give the latest update (0.8.30 Alpha) a shot. I have to say a lot of the changes seem to address a lot of my frustrations. The biggest of which: removing stamina from the ax THANK GOD. Playing this build felt a lot more like the iteration of the game I had played that got me interested in it. I stream it on Twitch and my chatters like the chill vibe of dungeon diving in the atmospheric environment. It proves a challenge still, but being able to experiment with weapons (YAY the tommy gun is back, and a flame thrower!) is half the fun. Its obviously still very much so in development, I feel that the balance of the first boss went too far in the other direction (from being impossible to me smoking him in seconds with the tommy gun) but that might be fine, the difficulty of the second area made up for it. I realize that I'm not one of those players that wants a Soulslike that's going to crush my balls into paste just for clicking the launch button. I like a challenge, but I like a chill challenge, too. That's a hard balance to master, so I'll have to keep that in mind the next time an update sends me into a berserker rage.