Beast Breaker

Been thinking a lot about whether to give it a positive or negative rating, but at the end of the day, the lack of polish and the excess of unnecessary, unfun mechanics drag the game enough to go into the red territory. Seeing that the first trailer on the Steam page is a trailer with streamers should be the only red flag I needed to avoid it, but I decided to give it a chance anyway since the core mechanic looked fun, so the blame is entirely on me. To be fair, the core mechanic is fun. Bouncing around giant beasts as a small critter uncovering and weakening cores should be fun enough to carry the game. And yet, despite that, the game isn't fun. The first thing you'll notice and you'll be unable to ignore is how unpolished the game is. Everything is 2D - so far so good, but the sprites are usually very low resolution, the poses are few and far in between, there's little animation to transition between poses, and the menus look like something made on MS Paint. I can respect a dev who knows that art is not their main strength, but I cannot respect a dev that knows that, and yet, decides to not hire or partner with an artist and instead, releases the game with Windows 95 UI. After a…

[h1]Simple But Fun Monster-Hunter-Like[/h1] Beast Breaker is a simple turn-based game that borrows some core elements from Monster Hunter and combines them with a pinball mechanic. The unique scale-breaking sequence and the satisfying but sometimes unpredictable bouncing physics easily make the core gameplay addicting, along with customizable weapon variety and combination. The art style is cute, and the characters are all lovable sorts. Beast Breaker is definitely the hidden indie gem you need to try out. [h2]Things I Like About Beast Breaker:[/h2] [list] [*][b]Track The Beast:[/b] The core gameplay can be divided into two parts: the tracking/preparation phase and the hunting phase. What makes the first phase interesting is that it's a small race against time. The beast will consume the corrupted pools on the map and become stronger over time. You need to track the beast, learn its weakness and various traits, and collect enough materials to craft items (essence for weapons or consumables for various status effects) for the fight at the same time. Of course you can head straight to the beast while it's at its "weakest," but a small preparation can often be the decisive factor t…

Very charming! Cute art and good music go along way, but the gameplay sometimes feels frustrating. I may have a small brain for strategy but several of the weapons feel inconsistent with damage output. Along with some weapons only having some chance or zero chance to do damage to the core/hp of an enemy. I often find myself a few rounds into combat and about to lose, because i cant find a reliable way to do enough damage to stave off the end of combat timer, or because the luck of my placement on the map vs the enemy means i actually cant do anything. I also don't really like the scouting before each fight. I wish the range of view was longer, there have been more than a few occasions where I fail to protect the settlement because I was busy picking up materials or the beast approaches the town from an angle i didn't see them coming. I wish I had better to say about it, but I'd give it a huge recommendation on sale

Beast Breaker has a really fun core idea. You're a tiny mouse fighting beasts many times your size, and the turn-based combat works surprisingly well with it. There is a story going on too, but I was mostly there for the combat. There are several weapon types that play quite differently, although once I found the setup that really clicked with me, I mostly stuck with it for the rest of the game. The fights themselves are usually short and fun, which makes the game easy to play in smaller sessions. I probably should have done exactly that, because after a while the grind starts showing. There are variations of the beasts, but not really enough of them, so fighting the same things again and again eventually became pretty repetitive. The scouting before each fight was interesting at first, but after a while it just felt like something I had to get through before the actual fight. I still had a good time with it overall and the combat was easily strong enough to keep me playing until the end. I'm only four achievements away from 100% now, although three of them want me to beat the final boss with different weapon types than the one I used for basically the whole game... so we'll see…

Great Concept But such a Poorly Balanced execution

Very happy to finally see this on Steam. As far as I know, it's a one of a kind genre experiment, and it is a ton of fun to put together new weapons and try entirely new breaking styles. Loved it.