Hadley's Run: A Starship Saga

Update: right after I posted my review, the cool devs tweaked the balance between game's upgrades and rewards. This makes the game a lot less "grindy" than it was before. The most useful to players might be the reduced cost of wormholes, which will let you make progress faster and deliver a more rewarding experience. Fun rogue twin-shooter with bad meta-progression that doesn’t respect your time. Since your ship behaves according to the twin-shooter template, a gamepad is highly recommended. It’s still possible to play with a keyboard and mouse, but it won’t be as enjoyable. Especially because a gamepad allows quicker access to dash move that lets you get out of the way, and two secondary attacks. The catch is that all extra powers have a cooldown period before they can be used again. You might start with the arcade mode to familiarize yourself with the action. The goal is to survive enemy waves and get as many points as you can. Gameplay contains elements of the popular “horde survival” games because you get to pick perks and buy upgrades after each cleared level. When you beat a certain number of levels, you unlock new weapons that can be picked on your next run. While campaign contains the same gameplay and elements of the arcade mode, it’s much more interesting because of the story. It follows Hadley, a space pilot who will take any job and who owns a ship that’s barely holding together. Of course, the whole thing eventually leads to something much bigger. It all starts with a mysterious cargo that only your ship can safely deliver because of its ancient equipment. Progress through the campaign is linear with random battles. After the initial mission, you find yourself in the main hub sector where you equip weapons and buy upgrades. Unlike the arcade, you unlock new weapons and perks by destroying a certain number of enemies, reaching an important story bit, which usually involves beating a boss, or talking to people in the main hub or sectors. There’s no map or waypoints so you’ll need to remember to talk to them after each run. Upgrades are identical to arcade mode. Unlike similar games where you can improve almost everything and get better the longer you play, this game has bad and grindy meta-progression and doesn’t respect your time. Although it’s true you can improve health and shield by a few percent or increase dash charges, you can’t improve damage, speed, or amount of currency. Also, most of them feel pointless. For example, a magnet that attracts the game's currency requires multiple upgrades before it becomes helpful. Then you can improve the likelihood of better perks appearing after a wave, but you never know what the odds are. Of course, each subsequent upgrade costs significantly more. Battles are random. Each one takes place on a single screen with enemies flying in until you destroy them all. There’s no time or enemy counter so you never know when the level will end. A level can have a random event such as holes that suck you in, gas clouds you need to run away from, meteor showers, and so on. These are nice because you never know what you'll get. Not all of them are fair. Solar flare, for example, disables your weaponry. Because you only have one dash and your ship is slow, you cannot escape fast enemies. This leads to cheap damage and quick death that ruins your entire run. The enemy comes in several types, such as fast small ships, darts that fly at you, bombers that drop mines, and so on. The most annoying is the shield ship that makes every enemy invulnerable until you destroy it. This feels like another cheap way to deal damage to you because of fast enemies. Of course, this doesn't happen often and enemy waves are fair. Since getting far is hard with basic gear, you will die soon. This will return you back to the main hub where you can use the collected space junk to upgrade and go on another run. Unless you build an expensive wormhole in the main hub, you’ll have to start every run from the beginning. Wormhole lets you jump to the safe spot after the last boss you defeated. You can also go on a challenge run, in which enemies get more difficult but you receive bigger rewards. Overall, the action is good, but it becomes repetitive too quickly. This is because your ship's capability does not improve. All you get are new starting weapons, which does not change much because there are only three. There is also no sense of success or substantial satisfaction after a bad run. Instead of tempting you into one more run before you go to bed, an unsuccessful run may drive you to never play the game again.

Hadley's Run: A Starship Saga is an awesome roguelite with an amazing art style and intriguing story. It takes around 12 hours to complete the game and none of the achievements is missable. [b]Approximate amount of time to 100%:[/b] Around 12 hours [b]Estimated achievement difficulty:[/b] 4/10, the most challenging will be doing a complete run without losing health.. gladly you have a shield, so you can be hit just be careful your shield doesn't break [b]Minimum number of playthroughs needed:[/b] it is a roguelite.. so multiple runs [b]Is there a good guide available:[/b] You don't need a guide, just talk with everybody in each hub [b]Multiplayer achievements:[/b] No [b]Missable achievements:[/b] No [b]Grinding Achievements:[/b] Yes, being able to buy all the upgrades can be a grind. However, the developers recently have increased the amount of trash a boss rewards [b]DLC-Only achievements:[/b] No [b]Speedrun achievements:[/b] No [b]Time-gated achievements:[/b] No [b]RNG-achievements:[/b] No [b]Does difficulty affect achievements:[/b] No, you can play on easy and still unlock all the achievements [b]Unobtainable/glitched achievements:[/b] No In Hadley's Run: A Starship Saga you play as Hadley who was just doing a normal boring job while he gets the request to transport a thing from A to B... and while he does that job something goes horribly wrong and Hdley ends up in a different universe/system and seems to be able to revive when dying in this universe. How do you get back home, while in the meantime also saving the world? What an awesome roguelite in which you farm currency for upgrades while also playing through an intriguing story. I had so much fun playing this game! I love the art style, the story, and how you unlock new weapons and abilities by defeating bosses. The different weapons make feel runs feel different and on top of that also the upgrades you'll receive during a run can make things feel quite different. I want to give credit to the devs as they were so incredibly responsive and quit the moment I encountered a bug. The patch for it was live very shortly afterward. Bugs can happen in any game and is part of game dev, what matters is how developers pick up those bugs and if they get fixed. I can say that the things I noticed or had questions about all got picked up. I also got the nice suggestion to change my name to Missi the Bug Huntress, which I highly appreciate and I love the humor ^^. None of the achievements are missable. There are ones for the story, so talk with every person in every hub. There are also a bunch of achievements for using the different weapons and abilities. The hardest achievement might be to complete a run without losing health. Gladly you have a shield, so you can get hit as long as it doesn't go past your shield. I was very scared of this achievement but I had no problems getting it after you know the enemies and the bosses. There is also an achievement for getting all the upgrades. This is only for the upgrade menu and not for making portals. I don't recommend making those cost currency, while using them also costs currency and it makes it so you will skip a part of your run, so earning less currency that run as well. Also, an important thing to keep in mind, when you die you will lose the currency you earned at that level. So if you grind in a specific level, don't die and think you take the currency with you, progress toward the next area, or exit to the menu. This achievement is quite grindy but I think that it helps a lot that they increased the rewards from the bosses. I give Hadley's Run: A Starship Saga 4 out of 5 stars. [code][url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/33025671-Missi-the-Achievement-Huntress/] Please see my curator page for more games that are well worth your time[/url][/code]

A challenging twin-stick shooter with satisfying combat, great art, fun characters, an awesome soundtrack, and a tonne of variety to the missions and upgrades.

Came for the beats. Stayed for the beatdown. Hadley's Run tells a story of uncertainty, love, entropy, kindness, and nonexistence amid the pulse of a stellar soundtrack. The pace starts off a little slow, ensuring you have time to learn the stick while poppin' 'roids and a few light waves at the start. But you probably came for action, and let me tell you, friendo. The action picks up. We've got cannons! Turrets! Death bots! Poetry! Lasers! Meteor showers! EMP! [spoiler] ~Darkness!~ [/spoiler] Rogue-lite perks within runs! Puns! Permanent upgrades across runs! Ancient technology! Spinning sawblades! Ninja dashing! Shield builds! Tanky builds! Exploooosions! Definitely worth giving it a shot or a whole brap even while it's on sale. I'd have bought it at full price if I'd known it was going to be this good. I love the passion and soul poured into this!

one hour in and I'm really enjoying it, it runs perfectly on the steamdeck which is the primary place I'm playing it. Hadleys Run has a lot of charm both in it's characters and it's artstyle that make it a treat to play

I was itching to play a twin stick shooter with some bite to it and Hadley's Run delivered! I enjoyed every aspect of it and look forward to future updates/dlc/future games from this dev. Keep up the good work!

A fantastic sci-fi roguelite with fun a unique Tech-noir aesthetic, amazing music, and fun characters and setting. I've had a blast with Hadley's Run so far. Stuff that's rad: Unique aesthetic Simple-but-challenging gameplay Easy mode is available if you want a more chill experience Lots of options for upgrades/adjustments on your run Permanent upgrades available Story an characters are fun so far, and I'm curious to see how things develop Able to choose more challenging fights for rewards/twists/etc during a run Waar-de-fook Stuff to be aware of: There are some quick changes to bright lights (not often, but on occasion or when jumping into portals). The music and audio balancing can vary a bit. Upgrades per-run, at least in the first few hours (I can't speak to later in the game) feel like pretty minor changes. While each run feels unique, some wider variety or more impactful buffs/etc could make them stand out even more.

LOVE THIS GAME! It has this vibrant unique art style, the game-play is fast paced and intense, and the music is absolutely amazing. Sprinkle in some quirky characters, and a little South African humour and this makes for a very enjoyable experience. Highly Recommend it!

A true gem in the rough. Well worth the time. I like to think this game is a labour of love, first and foremost. Highly recommended.

This game is great, it's really pretty, the soundtrack slaps, and there are some really fun and unique ideas with regards to level design for a roguelite, for example in one of the levels you have to hide behind a bubble whenever a meteor shower occurs. and it forces you to manage your space in an interesting way. It's got a distinctly South African flavour particularly in the overall tone of the story, but there are some homages to South African music as well which are great. very much recommend!