Metal Ascension

Bad design. First half an hour it's not fun because you can't understand it and can't progress at all. Then you suddenly realize how simplie it is. And it's not fun then for half an hour because it's easy. Then you get overwhelmed and bored. And it's even less fun. Becase you have a lot of money but nothing to buy and can't progress again. Then you find another ridiculous tactic like rotating your mouse around you as fast as you can and barrage everyone with simple lasers. Then you just get through levels and rolling the shop waiting for gold or red parts to appear. Then you get bored. It could be faster to understand that this game is bad if there would be any info about it mechanics.

Game is worth $7.49. It's probably the easiest "Survivors-like" I've played. There's not really any build variety, honestly. Weapons give (mostly) upgrades for the first 3-11 of each kind, but then stop after that. With the amount of weapon slots you can get, you're encouraged to just buy everything in order to have a ton of upgrades. Additionally, 'relic' and 'orbital weapon' upgrades are stacking, not unique, so you'll eventually just get everything, and there's really only one viable build in order to reach a high wave count. Your build won't really change in between runs, only the order you do it in. I got every achievement in 5 runs over the course of 5 hours and there's not a whole lot of replayability after that.

A lot of potential, probably add some characters with different playstyles to add more variety to the game.

Metal Ascension is a sci-fi roguelite survival experience developed and published by Don Pachi that combines mech customization with relentless enemy swarms in a way that feels both familiar and distinct within the growing survivor-like genre. Rather than relying on an elaborate storyline, the game focuses on the thrill of piloting a heavily armed combat machine through increasingly dangerous encounters while constantly upgrading and refining its capabilities. The premise is simple, but the appeal lies in watching a relatively modest mech evolve into a devastating force capable of tearing through overwhelming numbers of robotic enemies. The gameplay revolves around surviving successive waves of hostile machines while collecting resources and experience to strengthen your build. Each run begins with a basic setup, but the steady flow of upgrades quickly transforms combat into a spectacle of explosions, projectiles, and destructive power. The pacing is intentionally brisk, with enemy waves designed to keep players engaged from start to finish. There is very little downtime, creating a constant sense of momentum that encourages aggressive play and quick decision-making. Fans of actio…

It's a fun game but I would not recommend it right now. There's quite a lot I would like to see added/changed. There's no "back" during your initial pilot/weapon selection, this is mildly annoying when you misclick as you have to start the game then return to the main menu instead of just moving back 1 step in the selection process. A glossary of enemies and their attacks would be nice. More detailed statistics would be nice (i.e. exact damage, rate of fire, range numbers for drone and orbitals. Speed, crit/dodge chance numbers) If there were a "wait and see for further development" option, this would be it.

So, this isn't great. It has pretty good graphics and a good core idea, and I love the mech building roguelike concept they have going here, but it suffers from some questionable and likely rushed design decisions. For one, the only drone (the weapon system) you should equip after the first wave is the machine gun (which you don't have access to to be begin with, but all the drones are available after the first wave). Every other weapon is notably worse by a significant margin, except maybe the flamethrower, which is mechanically just the machine gun with worse range and a bit of penetration. Drone numbers is also the only stat that matters. Once you have about 10 machine gun drones, you've already won and you can basically AFK this game, which is not a good thing for a roguelike if can do it so quickly. Seriously, a semi decent roll at the shop will just net you those ten drones after about three waves. Boom, done, go make yourself lunch while the game plays itself. Worse, you can't even choose where the drones get placed, its entirely random. So mixed weapon loadouts are heavily discouraged, a very weird idea for a roguelike, a genre that normally encourages mixing and matc…