For a survivor game, you won’t find much that feels unique or that you haven’t already seen many times before. The first steps are always the same: you start by picking one of the two starting characters, play the only available stage, and unlock new content the more you play.
There are 12 characters, each named after their profession, such as Merchant or Blacksmith. They are unlocked either by beating a certain stage or by buying the right upgrade. Each character comes with a unique weapon, perks, and boosts to certain stats, sometimes balanced by a drawback, such as the Hunter, who has lower health but higher movement and attack speed.
Gameplay is familiar by now. You move your character around the area while auto-attacks and auto-aim take care of everything that comes within range. Defeated enemies drop experience, and once you collect enough, an upgrade screen appears where you choose one reward from a random selection of four options. These can be new weapons, which attack alongside your starting weapon, or stat perks such as increased attack speed, critical chance, and other bonuses.
There’s room for six weapons, and you can hardly go wrong with any of them. Perks are nothing special, and there’s no limit to how many you can get. Weapons, however, can be selected again to increase their level, damage, and unlock modifications, such as a barrel that shatters into three smaller pieces or a needle that pierces enemies. The maximum weapon level is six, and once you have all weapons fully upgraded, level-up rewards are replaced with stat perks.
The other type of reward is items, which appear every five levels or when you dig up a chest. You can carry only three items, and they provide bonuses such as increased pickup range, attack range, or dodge chance. Chests sometimes appear randomly, while others are found by collecting treasure maps that occasionally drop from defeated enemies, with their location marked by an arrow. Since chests are buried, you need to stand on the marked spot for a few moments to fill a progress circle. Just like weapons, once an item reaches its maximum level, it is replaced in future reward selections by a stat perk.
A run can last quite a while thanks to the generous pickup radius, allowing you to level up quickly without having to walk directly over every experience drop. Enemies also never swarm you in such overwhelming numbers that dodging becomes impossible, and they frequently drop healing herbs and baskets that collect all nearby experience in a single swoop. Enemies might be a bit repetitive, but new variants are introduced at a steady pace.
The goal is to survive for 20 minutes, which you will probably manage on your first attempt while fully upgrading all your weapons and items. At the 10 minute mark, you’ll have to defeat a mini-boss, while the stage boss appears after 20 minutes. Beating it unlocks the next stage, which features tougher enemies but also better rewards. These come in the form of gold, which you earn regardless of whether you win or lose.
Gold is spent in the village upgrade menu, which contains permanent upgrades. These are fairly standard, including increased attack, movement speed, experience gain, gold gain, and the previously mentioned new characters. The village upgrade tree isn’t particularly large, and each upgrade can only be purchased once, although similar perks appear later. It is, however, fairly expensive.
