Utopia Must Fall

There have been two games ever that I have negatively reviewed because of difficulty. This one hurts a lot more than my 'Forts' review because this is a REALLY interesting, fun, and ultimately great game. Difficulty becomes a problem, not when a game is too hard to fully complete, but when the difficulty prevents access to large amounts of a game or significantly hinders player enjoyment. To elucidate my point, the most common achievement for the game is to defeat the first boss. This has a completion rate of 63.8% of players. Conversely, the second boss has the tenth LEAST common achievement at 9.5% of players. I don't think I have to say this, but having ONE SIXTH, or more accurately, six-point-seventh (get out of my head) of the players be able to progress from one boss to another goes beyond a difficulty spike. This game has one of the most distinct difficulty cliffs that I've ever seen in a game. It feels like an intentional casual-filter. I believe there are three bosses, but there might as well be one and a kill screen for all I've tried. By the achievement stats for what I believe to be the final boss's defeat achievement, a bit more than half of players are filtered out by the "final boss" Not to brag about "skill", that isn't real in most senses, I'm just trying to contextualize the effort I can put in to a game; I have held a contested speedrun world record and this boss feels more out of reach. Achievements that should be significantly harder, such as killing EVERYTHING on the screen for 5 rounds IN A ROW have a significantly higher completion rate than killing the second boss. On top of that, in my experiences of trying, there isn't enough viability in alternative paths to justify any diversity in builds. Most upgrades are non-exclusive, which would be fine, except there is a rather limited amount of them, and you usually have most in time for the second boss let alone the third. The main guns feel like a choice between "The Good, the Bad, the Ugly, and a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ telephone pole cannon". The telephone pole cannon is disappointingly underwhelming. After playing for a few hours and working for a day, I came back to the game only to close it and realize I had opened it longing for a game that it wasn't. This has great potential though, and it isn't abandoned. Keep an eye on it

Okay, okay, set the way-back machine Mr. Peabody. If Space Invaders, Geometry Wars and Missile Command had an illegitimate game-baby it would be this awesome piece of code. Definitely a one-more time type of experience.

Good fun just getting into flow state trying to keep tougher and tougher waves from wiping out the city. Really enjoying how the technologies and enemies are evolving each patch through early access. Came here after seeing Datasette release the soundtrack. Stayed to stop the alien invasion.

I adore this game, sank a lot of time into it and highly recommend to anyone but I despise how bad the health creep can ramp up. I'd rather be genuinely be beaten by the procedural waves than have the fun sucked out of the day 40+ waves because I have to focus fire enemies for up to 20+ seconds while managing a full screen of projectiles and I can't fire a nuke to help get some breathing space because of 2 alternating voids which are also incredibly tanky. I do love the challenge of the later days and I'm close to breaking 2 million points ( Can't wait for leader boards ) but the insane health most enemies get from about day 45+ really kills me on the inside at times and puts me off playing more because I know it's going to be an insane slog in the end game. Regardless this game is a blast, I love the direction it's went, the sound design, enemy design etc. Technosphere is my favourite part of the game, it's such a raw battle of endurance at times and the music gets me every time. I'm excited to see what's in store for the future and continue me and my friend's rivalry of one upping each other on our scores. This game will definitely end up as one of the games I put over 1000 hours into and I can't wait to see what happens in the meantime. Much love :^)

I bought this game because it was recommended by the Nova Drift dev and had a similar art style. The art style is great, but this dev could learn a lot from how Nova Drift handles difficulty and build diversity. My main problem with the game is how it scales difficulty. While later days introduce more complex enemies and send more enemies at once, enemy health increases rapidly. It seems to be the main form of difficulty scaling. Within the first week, even buying every weapon upgrade, an enemy wave that could be killed as they enter the screen requires two passes with the main weapon. It makes enemies feel very spongy and takes away from what is initially very crisp handling. I compare this to Nova drift where enemy health only starts to increase in the late game, and both enemy speed and damage are also used as scaling mechanics. Build diversity is also lacking. There are several different upgrade paths, and the game presents multiple choices with interesting trade offs. The problem I have found is that many of those paths seem like traps. The number of viable options is much lower than it first seems. I might just be bad at the game, but the bullet spongy enemies in particular do not motivate me to get better. I wish it had something like the artifact of glass from Risk of Rain; that would be much more fun. I hope that the early access period is used to improve some of these issues, and I will probably revisit the game on release. It has a great concept, style, and basic mechanics, but the execution needs work.

I like the negative review that said "In this game you have to play the same two weeks over and over." It would be like negatively reviewing a racing game and saying "In this game you have to race other cars over and over" or "In this game every time a race ends, you just have to start over in a whole new race"

its got the bones of a good game, but as is, I don't know if I've has as much fun as I should've. The difficulty feels like it scales too hard too quickly, maybe I'm jsut bad, maybe bullet sponges aren't fun, and maybe swarms of bullet sponges aren't fun. except the first three days, I feel like I can never do enough damage to kill anything in a timely manner. I feel like I just take unavoidable damage from many sources. I'm not usually a bad player at games like this, but playing this game kept making me think of other roguelikes and how they handle their difficulty. There isn't really much in the way of metaprogression, you will unlock a few upgrades that can show up on your playthrough, but those don't really help with the difficulty scaling. Another issue I have is build variety: eg, there is almost none. You can choose four different weapons, two I found to be pretty abysmal to use, and you can choose your outposts, which there are only a small handful of, and each one has the same upgrade path. IDK, I love the aesthetic and sound design, but I am really disappointed with this game. Each round jsut feels like a slog to get through.

If you like tower defense, if you like big upgrade trees, if you like crazy explosives and if you like good acade fun. If you said yes to any of these this game is for you. Get it you won't regret, I need more updates to this so good!