To sum up in a word: Addictive.
I'm gonna focus on the early experience here, since due to how Diebrary is designed, it's going to be kinda similar for most players. And I'm gonna be blunt: Not too many of us are going to enjoy the first 3 minutes of the game.
Only.
The first 3 minutes.
After you get a few levels and upgrades to the Elph N Ranjar and the wand (because you can ONLY use these for the first run of the game - this is why I said the early game's gonna be pretty similar for all players), you'll feel a LOT better. After you hit the 6 minute mark, you're like "Oh crap, this is pretty fun." After playing the game for TEN MINUTES, I can safely suspect you'll be hooked.
That's right - [b]you will probably go from "Bleh, bland" to "Feelin It" to "Yeah, I wanna play this more" across 10 minutes of gameplay.[/b]
<ramble about mechanics and gameplay and stuff ahead>
Every level you get 4 choices of upgrade, which I think is fairly standard for the genre (Most of my experience comes from Vampire Survivors). These upgrades can be for your weapon (The Wand, on that first run), for a Secondary Weapon or three (non-primary weapons that you pick up with a level upgrade, quite like Vampire Survivors), your Character's Active Skill (Elph's is some sort of trap - I admit to not using it or looking closely at it), or some form of I-hate-to-use-the-word-"generic"-because-it's-not-the-right-word upgrade.
The thing is, these upgrades aren't (usually) just like "lol hit harder" or "Thing become better," like many upgrades in Vampire Survivors kinda felt like. [b]NEARLY. EVERY. UPGRADE. IS. MEANINGFUL.[/b] I [b]strongly[/b] encourage you to take the time to read the text for not just the four upgrades available, but any upgrades that show as following that particular upgrade. Why? Because upgrades BRANCH. Particularly for P&S Weapons and Character upgrades, taking one upgrade may lock you out of other choices, but unlock the paths towards others. The "generic" ones are look like a loop - one upgrade that branches into two choices, and then either choice leads back to a final one. Each type of "generic" upgrade follows a theme - piercing projectiles, splitting projectiles, chaining projectiles, combat pets (yay pets!), attack rate, damage, etc. [b]Many upgrades come with a weighted trade-off.[/b] You'll attack significantly faster, but your projectiles are slower (I think that was one). You shoot two projectiles instead of one, but they do a bit less damage each (I think that was another). Diebrary, much more so than other games of the genre I've seen, requests some [i]thought[/i] put into your upgrades. I say "requests" because the upgrades are weighted in your favor - they're like 70-80% good, 20-30% bad; so you can probably yolo your way through the upgrade process and still kick butt. Just not as much butt.
Character, Secondary, and Primary weapons follow (usually) a 3-level tree; the first node splits into two options, then those two options split into a total of 3 options, with either one leading to one unique to its path or a shared upgrade. It makes more sense in the picture - see the fourth-from-the-last screenshot above. These are all potent, and different branches have slightly different themes. But here's the kicker. Grabbing any of those third tier upgrades will unlock a new tree of options unique to that selected upgrade. For example, on my first run, I chose a 3rd tier wand upgrade called Full Auto or something - and next level I was offered another wand upgrade that held a new 3-tier tree [i]that was unique to Full Auto.[/i]. The 3rd-tier upgrade tooltips will (poorly) explain this, but it'll catch a lot of folks off-guard, I think.
Either way, like I said - every choice is meaningful. That Full Auto tree, for example, was all about Piercing projectiles. I then got some points in a "generic" loop that focused on Splitting projectiles, and very quickly I was clearing an entire pie-shaped section of the screen per wand blast. it was AWESOME.
Anyhow, enough about upgrades - they're meaningful, they're awesome, and they lend themselves well to at least a little mid-run advanced planning.
When you complete your run, which will probably be easy, because these upgrades are pretty hardcore, you'll be introduced to The Thing That Will Set Diebrary Apart. The Plot Twist system.
See, Diebrary calls your first run a "story," which is kind of a weird word to use. But then you finish it, and you get to select one of 6 (out of a total of I think 50-something) Plot Twists. These plot twists will alter the next game, and all following games run in the same "story," in a significant and gameplay-altering way. From what I've seen, some sound mostly/entirely good, some are kinda neutral, some are a pure pain in the butt with no discernible benefit (alas), and many are just kinda... weird. Like, one of them makes you farm experience. As in, you PLANT the experience IN THE F***ING GROUND, and it GROWS INTO AN EXPERIENCE PLANT a little later that you harvest for a lot more experience than it was originally worth. WEIRD. But NEAT.
Anyhow. This game is based on repeating runs within the same story while accruing more and more of these Plot Twists until, I guess, either you break the game or the game breaks you. I can see either.
But there's more.
These stories? Unless you choose to play one "Solo" (there's a dropdown when you create one), they're asynchronously multiplayer. You can make a public story, wherein ANYONE can play your story, and each person who does, at the end of their run, gets to vote on one of the available Plot Twists. And once the voting period is over, the winning Twist is selected and the story iterates into the next chapter, where it all repeats again. Or, if you don't wanna play public like that, you can play a private story, where you share a story with a few of your friends, complete with the voting mechanic. The trolling potential seems significant.
Finally, you earn currency as you play Diebrary, in the form of Scraps, Scrolls, and Tomes. Scraps seem to drop from anything, and I got a handful of scrolls every boss kill. Tomes, however, are awarded whenever the voting period of a chapter that you participated in is complete (pretty sure this includes Solo stories - the game mini-tutorials imply that Solo stories basically just have a voting time period of "nada", so whatever you select "wins" and the chapter concludes). You use Scraps, Scrolls, and Tomes to unlock bonuses, characters, secondary weapons, and plot twist options in the "Perks & Unlocks" screen, which you can access during character selection. These are very Vampire Survivor-esque - increasing costs for multiple ranks of the bevy of options laid out before you. But you can also Refund (most) of your purchases if you don't like what you ended up having bought, so you never feel like you can choose a "wrong" upgrade.
</mechanics ramble>
Sorry, that was kinda long. But this game has me excited. It's a blast, and the Plot Twist system promises to make it a unique entry in the genre that I really hope explodes in popularity (partly because we'll see more and more bogusly-huge public stories).
It has some downfalls, but overall, I was impressed with the quality of product that I got for five bucks.
Give it a shot.
