Nanoplanet Survivors

Updated Review (1/11) It's still really hard but no longer feels impossible after the recent patch. Thanks to the dev for being responsive to feedback. ----- Original review (1/10) The trailers look pretty fun but I don't know how much time is required to get to that point. The early game feels glacial. Your only "weapon" at the start is your cat. You don't have a gun yourself. Even when you get one you have to stop and face the horde, but doing that you're so slow that doing so is suicidal. The horde is significant from the start. This is the first five seconds of the game: https://i.imgur.com/qzI3wW0.png That's at least 50 Aliens coming at you with your cat chipping away at them one-by-one. (It takes the cat three hits to kill one.) Even with effort and playing it safe I find it a struggle to last longer than five minutes. This wouldn't be a big deal if there was some sort of meta progression to aide you through this early game and make you feel like your runs were contributing to something but after thirty minutes of playing I have one coin and all of the upgrades start at five coins each. So I have to jump in and try this struggle of a gameplay loop with the hopes of getting to the crazy fun that's shown off in the trailers. I'm not having fun. It's possible (and likely) that I'm bad and I need to git gud. It's possible that the developer wanted to create a hardcore experience and maybe they thought Vampire Survivors is for babies, but I question whether the developer has tested his game from a blank slate with no perks starting from scratch. Is this what he wanted new players to experience? I feel bad giving this a thumbs down because the developer seems like a good dude and has documented everything on their YouTube channel. I hope they can tweak it so more people can enjoy all their hard work. Once you get some movement speed, extra projectiles and a car it looks like whole lot of fun though.

I'm 8 hours in, still on what I assume is the first of many levels, unlocked a few new abilities and weapons and made a good dent into the tech tree. But wow, what an excellently paced horde survivor game. It definitely has a grind to it, but it's not boring and annoying. Every round you feel incremental progress, even just from a better understand of tactics and positioning. The urge to click Play Again on the Game Over screen feels like the "just one more turn" feeling you get playing a 4X game. Best $2 I've spent on this whole store.

Lots of fun! Hard the first few times, but a lot of fun once you get achievements and can start with power ups!

Incredibly slow and boring. Not worth any amount of money.

A great little game! Simple but effective game loop that keeps you coming back.