MineGeon: Renegades

Game needs serious work before I would recommend. 4/10 Other reviews addressed the lack of substantial upgrades which I agree with so I will not go too into that. Devs, just play Risk of Rain 2 and copy all the pickups like the missile launcher, ukulele, and flashbang grenades then add those to the game. Right now the strongest upgrades all seem to be boring passives like %5 life steal, or %50 dash cooldown. I never got any emotion beyond "lets get this over with" when I was selecting a new gadget. The main issue I have beyond that is the lack of explanations of core systems as well as performance. I played this game locked to 240fps at 1440p with a very high end PC. If I ever moved the screen my frame rate would wildly bounce between 180-240, creating a jarring choppy experience. There is no world where a game like this should drop beyond 235fps let alone 180. Optimization and performance patches are a must for me to come back to this game. My other main problem is the complete lack of any in game tooltips or care for balance. My first run took me beyond the fist boss and into the second zone of the game. I think the devs intended everyone to die several times before getting to this point because the NPC dialogue was all over the place and made little sense to me. Then when I actually started playing the second level I was soft locked from progressing due to not having upgraded my pickaxe, which meant I could not mine any new ore/XP nodes. It took me dying three times total and reaching this wall before I was able to upgrade my pickaxe and actually get progressing again. Dying to a boss multiple times can be fun, I died to Mom in Binding of Isaac almost a dozen times before beating her, but dying due to not dying enough previously feels like being punished for being good. Id recommend making all the XP nodes mineable with any pickaxe while still keeping the next tier of ore locked behind upgrades. That way players still want to upgrade the pick for more speed and new ores, but dont take a massive XP cut just for progressing. The above, combined with a lack of a single tooltip explaining what all the stuff I was finding was for I honestly had no idea what I was doing beyond shooting enemies and NOT mining ores. Below is a list of the things I remember confusing me, if I remember more Ill update the review later. Dying: What happens to my loot when I die? A single gadget lets me keep some gold when I die, but I do not see any of said gold back in the hub. Do my minerals I collected come with me? There is a drop pod to send 10 minerals back mid run, but when I die I have 2x the minerals I sent back. Drones: I can upgrade several things about my drone but have no idea what this mechanic is beyond increasing my carry capacity. For some reason I can upgrade the damage of something that does not seem to exist. Unlocks: I see nothing new for several runs, and then all of a sudden theres a whole new selection of gear to choose from. Where did this come from? Was it form an achievement? Did I just win the lottery with RNG by only seeing the same weapons, ultimates, and upgrades for multiple runs? Terrain: The maps are cluttered with breakables and junk. Why can I break 3/4 of the boxes in a stack but the fourth one is just nothing? What is the difference between the tiny plants I can break for upgrades and the other tiny plants that are decorative? After a few runs I just stopped collecting crap because I couldnt be bothered to memorize what every breakable/non-breakable looked like. Especially when it seems the unbreakable crates from level one become the breakable crates in level two. And dont even get me started on the slightly greener slime that kills you vs the normal gore, or the multiple tiers of lava that does damage you vs is safe to walk on. Ill probably check the game out in a year or so and update my review. Until then I would recommend everyone else do the same.

A decent roguelite that plays it relatively safe and could use refinement and polish. It's definitely not a bad game, but there are enough issues with it that make it hard to recommend at the moment. Soft recommendation if you want a more chill roguelite that is pretty grindy. Pros: - Seems to be a good amount of metaprogression - emphasis on resource gathering is refreshing. Other roguelites constantly push you into more combat and most of the stuff in the environment is just breakable set dressing. That's not necessarily bad, but the resource gathering slows down loop for a more relaxed roguelite with encouraged exploration. - good pixel art Cons: - weapons. especially starter weapons. You're presented with the same 3 starter weapons on each run. That might be ok if there were some random affixes to the choices (e.g. pistol with chain lightning, assault rifle with burst fire and higher damage, shotgun with bouncy bullets), but it's the same every time. - gadgets. There's a few interesting ones, but there's also the typical more crit, more damage, more move speed. Some are resource gathering focused and seem pretty much useless (e.g. drop a bomb on an already mined resource node). Hard to understand any coherent builds and hard to understand rarity. - balancing. The miniboss is harder than the act boss. It feels like there's no reason to go through the second level when you don't have good damage and can't mine the resource nodes. - nuke ultimate. Feels pretty bad to just take massive unavoidable damage when other ultimates are also just a big bomb and you don't take damage. - unskippable cutscenes. This is pretty bad for a game where you're expected to go through the same stuff over and over. Bugs: - scrolling doesn't work in the ship upgrade window unless my cursor is right on the scrollbar - few cases in the 'race' maps where i clearly jump onto a platform and fall into void instead - the mouse pointer/cursor is incredibly small to the point where I think it must be a bug. Maybe resolution related. Suggestions: - mainly, increase the variety in runs in early hours. Rarity + affixes for starter weapons? Add more starter weapons? - first level boss should be much harder to kill. It should be the case that if you can get to level 2 that you actually have a reason to be there and try to progress rather than just surrender the run since that's more efficient. Maybe remove the restriction on mining those level 2 resources too. - gadgets and upgrades could be made more interesting. 20% increased damage on rifle is ok, but it's not as interesting as adding an overheat mechanic to your rifle where its damage ranges between 10% and 50% and scales with heat. What about a gadget for adding a perfect reload mechanic to your rifle? - the cursor needs to increase in size or add the ability to change color for it. - allow to press escape to skip cutscenes.

Completed the first biome boss, and then it had me select a new branching path. I thought it would have dumped me back to the base after the boss, but ok... I quit through the game through the menu, and next time I started the game it started me back on the ship, with no upgrades unlocked from my last run unlocked. What a ridiculous design- it doesn't allow you to save and continue during a run, which took over an hour, and if you quit the game it acts like you didn't earn anything? Letting myself die would have been a better outcome. There was no indication in the UI that this would happen.

This game is awesome! Mix of enter the gungeon and heroes of hammerwatch kinda

The theme of this negative review should be "Death by thousand cuts". There's is not one major thing that sucks about this game, but there's several little things that add up and make the game unbearable. This is my list of thing that bothered me during my first playthru: 1. All of the enemies are slimes. Maybe there's something more interesting later, but having to kill slimes for an hour was absolutely boring. 2. I cannot for the love of me see where the crossahair is at all times. It's small and green and absolutely disappears into the background. There is no option to change it. 3. While you can rebind your keys, all the hints and labels are for the default binding, which is a bit confusing. 4. The sound of picking up coins is so awful and annoying I assume it had to be put there on purpose to piss people off :D 5. The shotgun bullet design is bad. You shoot one bullet, that then spreads into more and more bullets, which means that if you shoot someone point-blank they only receive dmg for 1 bullet instead of 6 or whatever. 6. The base graphical design is so hard on the eyes, that I literally had to hit escape and go to menu, because my vision got screwed and I couldn't see properly anymore. This is quite an accomplishment :D 7. Upgrades are cookie-cutter boring bs. I don't wanna keep listing stuff anymore. It's a million poorly thought out features implemented lazily and shipped out as a game. I would definitely not spend any money on this.

This game has INSANE potential! It's incredibly fun, unique, and addictive overall. It's probably the best bang for your buck game out there. I love the pixel art, the sound design, the concept... everything about it. Right now, it still feels a little unbalanced, but it's an absolute blast to play with friends. Raging, laughing, and jumping right back into another match is all part of the experience. 10/10 game!

very enjoyable game, needs a save and quit feature for both multiplayer and singleplayer as some runs take a very long time to complete