Beatdown City Survivors

My objection with this game is simple: it's Vampire Survivors, but your basic starting attack, on which a great deal of reliance is placed, is a hitbox-intersection-range melee attack. In other words, good the ♥♥♥♥ luck dealing damage without also taking it. I'm not [i]great[/i] at Survivors-likes, I'm competent, but I flatly cannot survive past the 2-minute mark in this and do not even remotely understand how I am expected to. I'm getting enough cash per run to afford about 1/5th of the most basic tier 1 upgrade. Not fun. Also, unless you really, REALLY enjoy rap, this is the worst soundtrack I've heard in years.

Good music but something just seems broken about how this game is balanced, I gave it more than a dozen tries but only once made it to the (first) final boss and just got spanked on the spot. Maybe I'm just bad at this game... it's probably just me...

Y

There's something special about this game. On paper, yep, the gameplay checks some boxes: typical melee survivor, seen it before. But the attention to detail in the enemies, environment, weapons, weapon combinations, art, sound and soundtrack gives it a gritty, streetwise feel like R. Crumb. I can't explain a lot of what's going on, but whatever it is, it's consistent with its own funky, stanky groove. (And seriously, the soundtrack is great.) It's not perfect. The problem with the game being a >melee< survivors continues here, where repeated contact with the enemies need downright surgical timing and collision detection from the game--and then the player needs to be able to fully capitalize on both in order to really get anywhere. But at the $10 price point...I mean, I even got it in a bundle! This is absurdly worth picking up in a bundle; it's comfortably worth full price. Anyone who dug Final Fight back in the arcades, welp, here's your next-gen Final Fight.

getting upgrades in this game is hard as hell

10/10