Cast Out Colony

Pass. Runs aren't much fun and the base building/house keeping aspect doesn't help this any.

Several years ago, Vampire Survivors was a singular joy in my life among video games; it was novel, quirky, and deep, despite its limited mechanics. It's a masterpiece, in my view. Since then, among the many games VS inspired, only a few have risen to a similar echelon and escaped the moniker of mere pretender or clone. These are games like Death Must Die, Halls of Torment, and Deep Rock Galactic Survivor. Now to that list I'm adding Cast Out Colony. The depth of Vampire Survivors meets the fun of base building. This game is a must play.

Pros: - Interesting concept for a game (colony building meta progression on your typical bullet heaven.) - Decent aesthetic/character design. - One button option to show a chart of which actives/passives go together for skill upgrades. - You get to control the layout of upgrade facilities since they're all structures in the colony building part of the game. Cons: - No dps meters at the end of the run (makes it more difficult to figure out which actives were actually carrying the run.) - The maps the battles take place in are too small - Bad pathing for villagers (often getting stuck on things and not helping like they're supposed to.) - Flashy particle effects on some actives obscures the enemies. - Roughly half of any run becomes purely a dps check (not exactly uncommon but made worse by the lack of dps meters.) - Meta progression through colony building can become tedious quickly (large numbers of decorations are required to get bonus stats and there's a delay between each decoration you can place.) - Ultimates disable your actives while they're in use but many don't seem to do enough dps to justify it. - Active upgrades are locked behind a building that requires yo…

An absolute gem in the flood of this genre that deserves a lot more attention than it gets! The graphics are really nice, lovely characters and details in the base building - and having the building aspect at all, even rewarding you for decorating! [strike]It doesn't come with the usual weapon/passive merging[/strike], but therefor you get an ultimate and you can take different villagers on your runs to assist you. A big YES! BUY!! from me if you are into this kind of games! This is one of the games I would buy a "Support the developer" package for if they had one! Edit: Found the weapon merging ;)

I'm not an expert in these kind of "number go up" games, but this one is pretty solid. I think the UI could've used more polish, and I really wish there were variety in the soundtrack, but otherwise it's mechanically solid and the bug designs are really pleasing and clever.

It's a nice Arena shooter with cute bugs.