A chaotic survivors-style game where a bouncing DVD icon fights waves of enemies while you upgrade weapons, unlock perks, and survive increasingly difficult stages filled with overwhelming visual effects.
Your first run will be a complete shot in the dark because you will have no idea what is going on or how to play. The playable character is a DVD icon that bounces around the screen. You cannot control its movement, but you can fire a laser that can hit anywhere on the screen, while the rest of the weapons automatically target the closest enemy.
Some movement options come from jump and dash, which take a while to recharge. However, only the dash really feels useful since it passes through enemies and deals damage. There is also a speed button that makes you bounce around faster and increases enemy speed, but it can easily lead to a quick death.
The screen quickly fills with all kinds of small and large icons that you need to destroy. They keep spawning until you die or survive for the required number of minutes. The amount of icons, projectiles, special effects, and colors becomes overwhelming and can easily strain your vision, and you’re pretty much shooting everywhere. Because of this, it is usually best to focus on larger targets and let your auto-weapons handle everything else.
Like in any other survivors game, you gain experience from defeated enemies, which leads to leveling up and selecting a perk. Since you have no movement control, experience is collected automatically. The same goes for health. It is best to ignore it because you will constantly see it drop and recover throughout the run. The only way to avoid damage is by dashing through enemies, but that is often impossible due to the sheer amount of things happening on the screen.
As usual, you choose one option from a random selection of three. These can be passive perks, such as increased fire rate, reduced cooldown, or additional projectiles, or new weapons that fire automatically. Almost every option can appear again, and picking the same perk or weapon increases its effectiveness. If you match a weapon with a specific perk, which is shown in the weapon description during selection, it evolves into a stronger version. Similarly, combining two passive perks creates a synergy. Unfortunately, the game does not show whether you already have the matching perk or weapon.
There are 20 stages, and you must complete them in order. The differences between them include how long you need to survive, the enemy damage multiplier, and the number of bytes you earn. If you want to increase the number of earned bytes, you can select one of the modifier packages with additional objectives and challenges, which also make the run more difficult.
Bytes are the main currency you earn regardless of whether you win or lose a run. They are used to buy permanent upgrades that include familiar bonuses such as increased damage, larger pickup range, more health, additional experience gain, and so on. Each perk can be purchased up to fifteen times, but the price increases with every purchase.
You can also spend bytes to unlock new weapons that will start appearing during runs. They are very cheap, and since you earn a large number of bytes per run, you may unlock all of them after just a few full runs. In addition, you can equip one (or more if you buy upgrades) unlocked weapon before starting a run to complement your basic laser. Some are more useful than others, but you will gradually learn which ones work best as you play.
Another thing you unlock after many runs is skins and accessories for your bouncing DVD icon. Some are tied to achievements with clearly listed requirements, while others must be purchased with bytes. All of them are purely cosmetic. Interestingly, your first run will probably unlock more than twenty achievements at once, which may look strange on your Steam profile because they will all have the same unlock time. This happens because achievements are awarded on the run summary screen rather than during the run itself.
Everything the game offers is documented in an extensive codex. The only requirement to unlock an entry is encountering it at least once during gameplay. The codex includes all enemies and bosses with their stats, weapons with all possible firing modes in both basic and evolved forms, synergies, and the full list of achievements.
