Slimes

I know Slimes looks rough and the writing is a bit crass, but I really enjoyed Slimes. Combat is smooth and matched what was happening in the story. The character dynamics and the backstory/worldbuilding are phenomenal. Seeing it on itch for the first time made me want to claw my eyes out but the more I played it, the more the visuals really added to the whole experience. The color palate is a choice and it works oh so well. Great game, recommend.

this game will beat your ass in about every way possible and you will love it

[i]Slimes[/i] is an engaging and cruel shortform RPG narrative. It's a story about religious extremism, xenophobia, and identity -- as told by slimes, in a sense. It comes together to both an inevitable and darkly amusing head, fully evolving into a piercing satire at the very end. The two-person battles are built around a damage dealer and a healing support. Battles are often tense but have a unique flow as you swap guns for each situation and try to manage each distinct type of slime. The different mixes of slimes are meaningful and make for an enjoyable (if horrid, in-setting) time. This review is a positive recommendation. However, I will say that I grew a bit tired of the battles by the last quarter of the game. Stun attacks become much more prevalent on the final few floors, making progression feel much more random and unfun. The game is fairly brutal throughout but in a manageable way, where you have some odd skills you have to use to finagle a win out of a losing situation. But... three enemies with area-of-effect stuns and a highly evasive buffer is a truly nasty combo. Should you play [i]Slimes[/i], I highly recommend not using the "you can only heal a limited number of times" difficulty toggle for two reasons. One, there are scenes at rest areas! I did not realize until a good way in, when I finally felt the need to rest and walked up 5-6 floors only to discover this. Two, my issue above with the stunlocking would have been greatly alleviated if I had been able to enter the final handful of encounters with more health. The most annoying part of the game is that you need to enter the menu and do a Full Reload after each fight so that your main damage dealer can indeed deal damage. In a different game I could see the tedium or monotony of this being used to add flavor to a methodical character, but here it just felt annoying since it was not narrativized (kind of surprisingly, given how many skills actually are tied to story or character progression in various ways). Overall, if you play without rest room restrictions, I think this is an easy recommendation if you are into dark, scathing stories and don't mind some crunchy RPG battles. The writing is clever, using an ensemble to tell a compelling story. And, if that's all you want, there's an easy mode too! Extremely mild disclaimer: I am in the credits of this game for a small bit of code used. This did not color my review in any way, lol!