i have played quite a few survivors games, i cant currently recommend this one. i wish steam let you leave a Neutral review.
Devs i left an earnest message for you at the bottom i urge you to read it
Enemy Design: enemies are pretty much all the same, i beat the first 3 zones, every enemy, is a reskin, no enemies had ranged attacks, no enemies had magic attacks or unique attacks, bosses just run to you and try to melee. the only difference in monsters are some are Slightly faster than others. how do they increase difficulty? they make so many of the monsters to a point that literally 100% of the map is monsters unable to move because its full to the brim of monsters, i
had this happen multiple times, they cant move because the game map is full and the hitboxes colliding with each other while so many monsters exist, causes a huge drop in performance., but your stuck in them so they damage you until you die.
Scaling: the whip? does 1 damage. if you upgrade it to max, 8, it still does 1 damage, if you evolve it? it does 2 damage in a larger area, nothing else changes with the evolve,
Badly Explain Systems: every survivor has like 20 stats, but you are not told what they mean or what they do. when you level a weapon, generally the stats are an improvement of 1% damage, or 3% area of effect ect. but sometimes it seems like these effect every weapon or only itself. but the effect is minimal.
usually the damage of a weapon in a match wont ever go up. and stays at. 1.but because of the poor scaling, these small % dont actually effect you unless you focus one hard enough it actually changes a 1 damage into a 2.
Bad UI: if you pause, and mouse over a stat such as duration and see 0.3 duration, no explanation of the stat shows up,, what does that mean, is that 0.3%? is that 30%? as of .3 of 1, if you mouse over a weapon you dont get a name of it, or an explanation of how it works, or what stats effect it, there is no sorting system for what is effected by what. there is just nothing if you pause and mouse over anything you own. you cant see the cooldown of weapons in game either, which is annoying.
Bad Character Design: with all these stats that we dont know what they do, most of the survivors have most of these stats show a 0, the differences in characters is maybe a slightly higher number, which again you cant find a way to know what the difference means in terms of strengths, its hard to tell what character is better at what.
honestly they all felt the exact same, i felt no difference, they were just different skins with a different weapon, nothing else. on top of that, we only had 2 female characters, in a roster of 15. if you count a cat with a female name we can up that number from 2 to 3. a couple more would have been nice. but again all the characters felt the exact same.
Flawed Shop & Currency: the out of combat shop you spend gold on, there are only a few upgrades, again you arent told what they do, are super cheap, or better put, you are given way to much gold, to the point i maxed out the upgrade tree, ON MY FIRST RUN. and i didnt even get to the end! (due to the map filling up with so many enemies they could not move, the lag was insane)
there is a pickup upgrade in the game that makes enemies drop gold instead of exp, but after your first run, this is a BAD thing because gold does nothing, you maxed out the tree right away, instead you lose tons of exp from the enemies who are now dropping useless gold instead of valuable exp.
EXP Without Purpose: there are multiple gems of different color, if you see a bunch of gems of different colors, and pick them up slowly one by one, your exp bar moves at the same rate. if there are gems that give more than the others, you cant tell, enemies just constantly drop all different colors of gems and as you pick them up your exp bar goes up at the same rate.
TLDR wait for a big Sale, check back in a few Months, or Purchase to support small time devs.
A Message For The Devs. if you are receptive to criticism, im going to list what your game desperately needs if you want to no mans sky this. (the act of working on a game after release to the point its beloved instead of forgotten)
1st: Different Enemy Attacks and different types of monsters are needed desperately!!!! this is core for you, give some ranged attacks, some aoe attacks, make some do leap attacks, some attacks that can stun or slow you down, give bosses meaningful attacks, stronger than normal monsters that we have to learn. so far they just move. if an enemy flies have them be faster, give enemies staves and magic attacks have beasts spit acid/fireballs ect. add element types and make each element do different effects to the player and to the monster, fire could be damage over time, air could slow you, earth could blind you, ect.
have some enemies be really strong and terrifying but not show up in large amounts, make some some enemies teleport to you, some enemies could turn ethereal vanishing and then coming back to reality to avoid your attacks, a very quick and elusive enemy that shows up to Steal your gems that you need to chase to make it drop what it picked up and if it gets away to the edge of the map it gets away with what it collected, things like that make enemies feel connected to the character, as they will hate exp being stolen, making it personal because players felt it was theirs, things like that really make a game stand out, you need variety in enemies to make the game have any engagement or fulfillment. give the bosses that show later up more types of attacks that people have to learn or quickly adapt to from lots of aoe attacks at once they have to dodge to a slow sweeping laser beam, or a freezing breath attack that if it hits makes you stuck for a couple seconds,. you need more than just different skins and different speeds.
2nd: Rework Scaling of Damage and health of enemies., if Whip does 1 damage at ranks 1-8 then damage % means nothing. have damage at least go up by 1 per upgrade for the whip, scale enemy health and damage of other weapons accordingly, if something is slow, increase its damage per level more, if something is aoe have its damage go up less, your multiple projectiles is currently the only way to scale damage that matters, by giving more projectiles, but that upgrade needs to be limited as its so much more powerful than other upgrades, so put it at max level 2-4, and upgrade the stat increases of other support equipment. Soup/Armor give the same Stat, of 0.8 or 0,2. you need more variety. soup could be health regen instead of armor.
damage at the start of 1s 2s 3s or a big 10 rarely with a slow attack, if your in the first few waves is normal, but by the end of the game those numbers need to be higher, to reflect that your upgrades actually increase how effective the weapons are.
3rd: Either lower the price or put the game on Sale constantly, like 50-70% off, you need more traffic for your game, and your price is too high for what it gives. its more expensive than vampire survivors while only giving a fraction of the content. once it has more content a higher price would work well for you currently you honestly are making less money than you would if it was cheaper.
4th: Simplify EXP, make most monsters drop the same amount and have them look the same, and have bosses and stronger monsters drop a different color gem, using the rainbow is your best bet for this, red for lowest, scaling up from orange yellow green blue purple, most games scale rarity as such, and using gems the same would really work well for you, if someone sees a purple gem they need to get excited as it could guarantee a level up, compared to now where players just see the gems as gems ignoring the colors.
5th: the shop, give way less gold to players at the start, and add more types of upgrades, make their cost scale higher.
ran out of room if the Devs are receptive ill add more in a forum post.
