Weapon Hacker

Rogue-lite Metroidvania with modular equipment/upgrades. Wanna shotgun laser blast? Slap a few splitters on a laser module and bam! shotgun laser blast. Want to be the bullet hell? several bounce upgrades, a few splitters, and long range upgrades and there you go! And that's before we get into the ability to stack different weapon types. What we have is fun, and shows good promise. It is however unfortunate that due to the lack of getting noticed it appears that the dev has stopped working on the game. Some might think what is there may not be enough, and I can't fully fault them on that. The base is there and it feels like it is ready and able to be built up from it, such as larger worlds, more upgrades, weapon types, etc etc etc. But sadly that's sometimes the fate of games that don't get noticed soon enough to let the devs continue working on them. Though there is also [spoiler]a NG+ and NG++ of sorts[/spoiler] that is hidden in each run. And once finding that out it makes it feel a bit more full. Without knowing that, it does make it feel like the game is shorter than it actually is. Though the generated maps are a bit small, though that may be to your benefit considering the rogue-lite nature of the game, especially since you can't save mid run. I would say pick it up, especially on a sale. It's worth getting more eyes on it.

Conditional recommendation: Get it on sale for 5$ or so. Not really worth 10$. Great proof-of-concept demo for a different, better, more-involved game. The weapon-module swapping reminds me of the later Ratchet & Clank games (a plus in my book). The level layouts and enemies are sufficiently entertaining/challenging if you get the weapons/mods in the correct order, but if RNG is unkind to you, you *will* die. However, as long as you get the items in a reasonable order, this is not a roguelike; I won on my second try. The postgame challenges are just moderated versions of popular self-imposed challenges in other metroidvanias (e.g. no missiles; no damage), and so don't actually add anything on top of the regular game. Advice to the dev for their full game: [list] [*] Add a metagame. See Rogue Legacy and Children of Morta for examples. [*] Add an incentive for the challenges. e.g. completing the no-missiles challenge allows you to start with 5 missiles on a normal run [*] Make the challenges their own contained version, preferably shorter. So a normal run could go through 10 bosses, while a no-missile challenge would be only 2. This would allow the normal runs to be significantly harder, but provide a way for the player to modulate the difficulty. [*] Add more challenges based around weapon types. e.g. massively-reduced range but incredible spread for a melee run [*] Character customization and/or randomization. Sure, these test subjects are indistinguishable to their bosses, but that doesn't mean they have to be indistinguishable to us. [*] Add some story beats. Explain why we're in this test chamber, fighting monster-producing bosses. [*] Consider removing the character upgrades and make everything a gun. Double-jump? Replace with recoil-increasing mods. Lava-shield? Replace with an ice mod. etc. [/list] Obviously, the above will not appeal to certain players (*cough* Rogue purists *cough*), but it would drastically extend the longevity of the game, allowing/encouraging players to experience more of the weapon-swapping fun without forcing themselves through the same 3 environments over and over again. Overall, it's a great demo/POC, but it needs some fleshing-out before it's worth 10$. Edit to add score: As a full game, it's a 3/7; missing sufficient content for a recommendation, but not outright terrible. As a POC? A solid 5/7, very much looking forward to what this dev can do if they put some more time in.