Astral Lords

The concept of blending bullet hell survival with RTS base building is honestly genius. The 2D hand-drawn art style is gorgeous and sets it apart from the usual pixel art in this genre. Mowing down massive alien swarms gives you a huge dopamine rush, and it’s surprisingly easy to pick up and play. BUT, the game currently feels like a puddle—wide but very shallow. Once you figure out the optimal base layout, every run feels exactly the same. We desperately need Steam Workshop support so the community can add more complex towers and commanders.

I’ve played almost every survivor-like out there, and the addition of RTS base-building is exactly the breath of fresh air the genre needed. The hand-drawn art is fantastic. But the honeymoon phase ends after a few hours when you realize the meta-progression is super shallow. We need more diverse tech trees and tower upgrades. Still a thumbs up for the innovative concept.

I'm gonna preface this by saying that I usually love janky games, but this game has a bit too much of it. The core concept is great and I love the artwork, but the experience is soured by a myriad of bugs making it a tiresome experience. Things I encountered in 1,5 hours of playtime: translations wrong or plainly missing, units not doing anything, big units being trapped in the building that produces them (tried it twice on different maps, both times failed), skill descriptions are vague and sometimes just missing. It needs repeating how bad the ai is for friendly units. Some units remain stationary upon spawning and don't do anything. You get 2 commands that are active for the entire army: follow and defend, but switching them doesn't always work. Units are also extremely slow. All in all the game has promise, but it needs a lot more work before I could recommend it.

This is surprisingly fun. I've barely ever played any vampire survivors like games, including vampire survivors....I really just don't like them, but this is quite a bit more and way more entertaining. Game definitely deserves a try, especially at the current price point.

What the heck did I even just play? anyway, 10/10.

I build tower, I shoot aliens, screen explodes. 10/10. Just add co-op so I can play with my friends!