DEFRAG

(ignore my time played - I reached 100% around 5 hours but left the game running by accident) Interesting incremental bullet hell game, although the difficulty is definitely on the casual end of things as you can become essentially unstoppable through the meta progression so you don't need lightning reflexes to get through DEFRAG (but they will help you beat multiple stages in a row before buying more upgrades). I played using mouse and keyboard, but the control experience was quite frustrating because the mouse wheel always zooms the main node tree in and out, even if you are also scrolling through the list of [spoiler] modules[/spoiler]. Also, even if you're using the arrows keys or WASD to move your little cube during the bullet hell levels, at the beginning of play it will always move towards your mouse cursor until you hit a key. It's little things like this that suggest to me that the developer could have used a bit more testing or watching people play the game in "real conditions". There's a flirtation with buildcrafting later in the game which is really cool on paper, but the interface to switch out "gear" is awful: there's even multiple loadouts available but items aren't unequipped from 1 when you switch to 2 (and so on), so if you want any of the same items equipped in two loadouts you'd need many multiples??). Just feels half-baked. The progression is pretty well-balanced - I don't think I ever had to attempt a stage more than two or three times and many of them I beat on the first attempt. One positive thing is that just when you feel like the unlock tree is getting a bit grindy, you'll beat a stage and a new meta mechanic will unlock. This happens a few times during the game and is very welcome - if I could tweak one thing it would probably be to unlock these things one stage earlier just to keep the progression from feeling too repetitive. Nice music, sound effects and there are some neat retro visual effects that anyone who played PC games in the 80s or 90s will appreciate, especially as you get towards the endgame. I'll add here that the game is currently rated PLAYABLE on Steam Deck and this is correct - you should play this game on a PC if possible. The text resolution makes it pretty unreadable on the Deck screen, and overall controller support feels good in the bullet hell levels but very bad in the meta layer. I want to stress that if you are looking for a casual bullet hell experience with the twist of an incremental meta layer and great visuals and sound, then you could do a lot worse than DEFRAG. I recommend it and enjoyed it a lot: I just think that with a few QoL tweaks this would be a game I'd be gifting to friends rather than just leaving a positive review.