Grave Gunner

First impressions & gameplay up to final wave: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILBvIUPWE6Q This game, in short, is fast-paced, addicting, and really quite good. The description of "smooth and expressive movement" is on point, and though you don't have a whole lot of offensive abilities (two guns and throwable daggers), their simplicity and versatility works well as you run circles and "kite" around the endless hordes of oncoming cacodemons. Eventually, you need to start using your explosive daggers as vertical movement tech (think rocket-jumping) to escape the cascade of enemy attacks thrust your way, alongside granting you access to the additional higher-up reload points around the map. It's almost deceptively difficult - you start off thinking that the challenge is babycakes and then by the time you hit wave 8 or 9 you succumb to your first death and need to actually start strategizing. Every demon you kill drops a health pick-up, and you need to weave through the map and continually grab those while balancing not getting hit in the first place. You will get hit. The difficulty only ramps up as you go along, and my time at review includes getting up to the last wave but not yet having the stones to fully beat it (despite repeated attempts). Each wave is sequential - that is to say, the creatures and their order aren't randomized, so you can try to adjust strategies dependent on the level. One of the things I appreciate is that, in every wave, you need to re-acquire gear - the first couple mobs you defeat will drop your second gun and additional daggers until you've maxed out. While this may seem a little frustrating, it really takes like 15 - 30 seconds and can "set the stage" for however the run is going. It feels good, looks good, sounds good, and it's worth the price of admission. Boomer shooters aren't generally my thing and I found this hard to put down. My only slight critique is that I think the slime damage scaling needs to be tuned down a bit - I think they're the only creatures with "splash" damage and it generally seemed out of line w/ other mobs - but maybe I'm just sour at them in particular. Really very good for a solo dev's first outing, looking forward to what's cooked up next!