NET.CRAWL

Disclaimer - I played the demo over 50 hours. It's that good. I have zero affiliation with the game creators, but it may sounds like I do! I've just purchased it so I can give them money and played for 30 minutes so I could leave a review, and forgot how much I loved it. It sucked me right back in! I have ADHD and this is amazing. It's the right amount of thinkiness with the perfect amount of dopamine. Can a brain take a bath? If so, this is it. This game is as if Stranger Things (soundtrack) and Tron (visuals) went on a date, The Matrix was the bartender, and they all sat and scribbled down their idea for a puzzly roguelike. Few games have a fleshed out mood (I think people younger than me say "vibe") like this. I think of of Darkest Dungeon for foreboding and misery, Bloodborne for discomfort. Nine Sols for "wow, I never knew I needed Tao Punk". And I now think of Net.Crawl for "I'm in - no - I'm part, of a computer - and there's a war - but let's be chill about it". It's like what people of my age imagined when they saw Hackers as kids. It's unbelievably thematic with tiles named things like Quick Start Guide, Recovery File, Empty Folder, Wall of Text, Trojan, Bookmarks, Incognito, etc. And this is all happening on a hexagonal grid of tiles/spaces, as a boss-run, through diverging and converging upgrade paths. And as for the ADHD, the runs are quick. You're never fully in control because you're balancing a few variables at once. Cores (bosses) need Data to be satisfied. Trace (essentially a DoT that needs to be managed) will drain your Link (HP), Firewall gets in the way of you gaining Data, and Cores will constantly get in the way of your plan. You're going to need an Aspect Matrix (build/perk tree/grid), a fleshed out Data Pool (set of blue tiles that are upgraded as you go), and a strong System Grid (green, support tiles to help you manage Trace). Cores are all going to have their own game plan for disrupting this that all play very different from one another. For one boss, having extra Callbacks will be helpful (retracing your steps without using actions). For other bosses, movement will penalize you. Despite all this craziness, it's so, so, accessible. The tutorial is great. The visuals and sound are top notch. It's playful, has anthropomorphic computer concepts, neon lights, jockeying for position, and you're never fully in control. I wish I could say it reminds me of X or Y, but it is its own thing. The only time I felt any familiarity was how corrosion and planning ahead felt almost but not quite like the board game, Spirit Island, one of the best board games ever made, which is praise beyond praise. Just try it.

A satisfyingly different strategic "deckbuilder" that's about slowly building synergies and exploiting grids in weird ways. It has a bit of Hoplite in it, if you ever played that on iOS. Each level is a turn-based, tile-based challenge of some kind, but rather than just defeating enemies you're usually solving a problem that's much more unusual, affecting how you move, or how you activate tiles, or how you spend or gain resources. Every level has felt quite different so far, and that's before you take into account the synergies of the tiles you're adding to your pool, the bonuses you're adding on top, or the items and resources you're stocking up. I've only seen the first bits of the game but I've enjoyed it a bunch.

游戏底子很好，机制有趣，具有挑战性，作为一个玩过30多款rouge游戏的玩家来说，这游戏很有潜力，demo我就玩了很久，但目前的抢先版的内容还比较匮乏，重复游玩价值不够，以及有一些小问题亟待优化，以下是我的一些建议： 1.游戏的设计方向要更偏向于rouge卡牌而不是解谜，格子是暗的并且随机排列，重复次数有限，玩家并不是规划最佳解法去解题，而是成长卡组，针对不同机制的boss根据运气来牌去抉择出牌，只有一点解谜的味道在里面，本质还是rouge卡牌，因此后续的更新一定要把rouge性能做得更好。 2.建议引入问号事件，让玩家在走图时更有惊喜感和选择，保留几个重要的地图配置，其余都可以换成问号事件，事件设计的多一些更有想象力一些。 3.引入更多的机制扩充游戏内容，比如补丁，可以放在各个系统上使其获得加成，可以搭配出强力的组合，让玩家能爽起来，同时诅咒补丁也可以存在。机制多了地图也可以稍微拉长一些，无尽也可以做了。 4.引入更多的难度选择，比如1-10阶，每一阶只增加一个负面，难度曲线更加顺滑，也可以让玩家更多的重开，不断爬升享受成就感。 5.适当做一点宣传，比如在社交平台上请一些游戏up玩玩，我就是从B站看到的，不然好游戏很难被注意点。 6.一些文字没有翻译，没有图鉴，一些东西首次遇到并没有解释（比如腐化特性里加入的是什么），系统池的方格设计太让人难受了，系统和数据的获取地图块可以都放在商店里。

Frankly, I am kicking myself for not having paid more attention to this game. I played the demo a while ago and thought it was decent, so I put it on my wishlist. But I then took forever to actually make the purchase. I finally picked it up on a slow day, and I don't know why I waited so long. This is such a unique take on the roguelite "deck-building" genre. It oozes style. Quick, snappy turns with an option space that avoids decision paralysis. Deep build variety and potential make synergistic runs feel incredible. There is massive variety in content from system grids, data grids, cores (enemies), and aspects (perks), so I don't see the game running out of content for a long time. And the developer is currently and actively adding more to the game, all for less than $10. Truly, highly recommended.

从Playtest一路玩了有30小时，还是很有意思的。

An actually unique feeling roguelike "thing"

An endlessly charming and challenging roguelike puzzler, from the maker of what I consider one of the best mobile games ever made (Cards of Terra). I love the cute cyberspace aesthetic and the easy to learn gameplay. But don't let that fool you! this game is HARD. AS. NAILS! The challenge is to move across hex grids in a network, trying to gather data to defeat devious AI Cores, but you're constantly under threat of Trace damage. So you must balance gathering data AND decreasing Trace damage, AND Cores trying to attack you, all simultaneously. And each Core has a wildly different way of trying to screw you over, and they get increasingly tougher and more devious. Thankfully you slowly acquire upgrades to both yourself and the grid spaces to better handle the threat of deletion. But there's still a lot going against you! Especially when each level will usually leave you with less and less health in classic roguelike fashion. I feel like planning defensively, and then playing offensively is a decent plan (but I still get my butt kicked more often than not!) I'm grateful there is an adjustable difficulty level, and challenges for players of all levels to enjoy. The colorful cyberspace world that the game exists in is also fascinating. From the music to the icon character designs, it's a very pleasant virtual world to play in. I do wish all the characters also spoke outside of the Tutorial run though, since it does sound like they have interesting things to say about themselves and their world. Plus it does feel a bit lonely doing runs while they only stare at you while you're buying items haha. Overall I sincerely hope more people become aware of this gem, since it could very well be the best puzzle game of this year. PS. I do hope that someday, somehow, Cards of Terra will finally come to PC. Well, I can dream anyway! :)

TLDR: try the demo if you like roguelikes that demand slow, careful, tactical decision-making, but the long term deckbuilding/strategic layer is still present and solid. It's a crime that a game of this quality has 20 reviews and was hidden so deep in my discovery queue. Just play the demo if you like roguelikes and you'll know within 10 minutes if this game is for you. There's enough content even in early access that I expect to play this game for 20-40 hours to "see it all", meaning get a few wins at the highest difficulty, defat every boss, and use most of the apparent archetypes in at least a few winning runs. If this game was released as is I'd still recommend it at the current price tag. This is a solid experience with unique mechanics focused around movement and managing a few different resources. Each enemy changes the rules or adds constraints to the puzzle. UI/UX/sound are polished and clean. Despite the deckbuilding tag, I find myself likening this game to Into the Breach: in my experience so far, your short-term, tactical, micro decision making is more important than your long term, strategic, macro deckbuilding decisions, though there are still plenty of keywords, archetypes, and synergies in the "deckbuilding" part. Expect slow and careful gameplay, mousing over all of the tiles and rereading their descriptions and keywords over and over again as you plan out the best sequence of moves. So far at standard difficulty, I've been able to extract nearly 100% of value out of every level while risking nothing, ending the run with 0-2 hearts lost total, despite never using a consumable item and making purposefully suboptimal decisions to learn. But at the next difficulty, most of my runs require me to triage unless I get off to an extremely strong start, and I've started to pick up some losses. It's early access, and there are a few keyword/node descriptions that are not totally clear, a handful of typos, and I've experienced one node that seems to just not work. All of this is very forgivable. Some feedback since this is still early access: figuring out how to increase asymmetry between runs is what will change this from something I'll enjoy for 30 hours to something I might keep coming back to for a hundred+. Most deckbuilders that don't have different card pools for different characters suffer the same problem, and while the randomized talent tree (I can't remember what it's called in game) is a good stab at this, my decision making doesn't change as much as I'd like from run to run. The way card drafts are earned currently, it seems taking an upgrade whose geometry allows you to replace more starter nodes (blue) or empty nodes (green) will almost always be a stronger choice than an upgrade containing a highly synergistic node or upgrade but whose geometry doesn't slot in as neatly. But maybe I'll find this opinion less valid as I play more at higher difficulties. As a result, I often get a lot of the same generically good tiles every run, even if the synergistic tiles are still the best choice when they don't come with tradeoffs. Still, a very strong recommendation to at least try out the demo.

Рекомендую! Игра Net.Crawl является стратегическим рогаликом, довольно хардкорная и затягивающая. Теперь конкретно про игру, мне очень понравилась рисовка, общий стиль, и музыкальная часть, обычно я выключаю фоновую музыку в играх после первых часов игры, тут же музыка не надоедала, и подходила под настроение в игре, единственное хотелось бы еще побольше различных мелодий на прохождение. Рисовка прям радовала глаз, игровой процесс плавный, приятный. Игра имеет сильный порог вхождения, нужно поработать мозгами чтоб разобраться и влиться в игровые механики. С каждым последующим боссом игра становится все хардкорнее, последний босс вообще жесть.. Но с большими усердиями я его прошел, что не забываемо) Теперь, что не хватает игре. Что нужно поменять на мой взгляд. Самое главное сделать перезапуск уровня бесконечным. Ограничение перезапусков просто ведет к тому, что я постоянно пере заходил на уровень через выход в меню, и для меня это действовало как перезапуск. Да и с такой сложностью игры, ограничение перезапусков ведет к вообще демотивации стараться и пробовать множества раз. Особенно последнего босса я проходил часов 5 точно, и количество перезапусков перевалило за 200 раз точно, я не хотел перезапускать весь ран, действовал по билду, что получился изначально. Считаю, что это и есть фишка игры, когда ты методом тыка как нейросеть пытаешься добиться цели, подбирая наилучший путь прохождения уровня. Еще бы как то переработать выбор сложности, Потому как лайт сложность от обычной отличается не сильно и то, только на старте рана чувствуется. Дойдя до конца первого рана, где я одолел трех боссов, оказалось, что для последующего прохождения нужно было накопить 10 кристаллов, об этом не предупреждалось заранее, и мне пришлось бы пере проходить все заново. Поэтому, такое условие должно быть где то помечено, чтоб игрок осознанно готовился и копил свои кристаллы. Теперь по сюжету. Задумка интересная, хотелось бы узнать повествование героя, почему зайчик, тем более образ запоминается в голове и является лицом игры. Также более глубже узнать про мир в игре и определенную завязку в сюжете. Еще игра начинается с рисованной заставки, но после прохождения такой заставки не хватает. На мой взгляд если бы, заставка начиналась со сценки, где человек включает компьютер и на экране у него как раз проявляется этот цифровой мир, то было бы как то легче новичку влиться в игровую атмосферу. А потом игровой процесс и так по уши затягивает игрока. Очень сильно бы подогревали интерес и разряжали геймплей, нарисованные кат сцены, которые вели бы дальше по сюжету. Игра еще в раннем доступе, очень надеюсь на допил сюжета, исправления парочки моментов и добавления еще боссов.

After some doubledozenplus hours in demo, this is really good. Very innovative take on the general roguelike genre - more boardgame inspired than strictly deckbuilder inspired, but still enough for StS fans to feel at home. Something old and something new is truly the best way to make something!