Hellbridge

Some particularly powerful spells need to be sought out; without them, it's tough at the start. Otherwise... the music is pleasant, the graphics are polished, and the gameplay is dynamic. Ok for the price.

The premise is that you’re a lone mage who has to protect the land of the living by holding your ground against the entire demon horde coming out of hell portals. Although this sounds like a defense type or survivor genre game, you have to attack with the spells at your disposal on your own. Hints of the survival genre are shown in the orb following you, the spirit of a goddess that aims and fires on its own, and the experience dropped by enemies that you need to collect to fill up a bar that lets you choose your first spell. It’s a standard roguelike mechanic, with a random offer of three options from which you get to pick one. Spells are divided into attack and normal spells. The difference is that attack spells are more direct and come with a faster cooldown, which means you can keep holding down the button for a continuous attack, while normal spells damage a wider area and need several seconds before they can be used again. Depending on your controller, aiming is automatic when playing with a gamepad and manual when using a keyboard and mouse. You can have only one attack spell and three normal spells, and if you get something else you want after a level-up, you’ll have to …

Overall, pretty good. I liked the dark night-time color palette. One thing I'd like to see is more attack variations for the bosses. It would also be cool to have some weapons for the hero, like a sword, bow, axe, etc.

I liked it, but it got pretty challenging in Hell :))

Lots of fun, with a challenge if you wish. Plays well and can suck you in, only needs a bordered option. With multi-monitors you can you can easily glide over to something else without noticing. Accidently ended stream once but other than that extremely enjoyable only needs to need bordered.

Surprisingly good bullet heaven with a lot more going on than I expected. The skill variety is one of the highlights. Just when I thought I had seen everything, the game would throw another new ability at me. Combat feels fluid, there’s a good variety of enemies, and runs stayed interesting rather than becoming too repetitive. The dialogue was also better than expected. Even across multiple runs, I was still seeing new lines and interactions instead of the exact same conversations every time. My main criticism is that I wish the game leaned harder into the bridge defence side of things. There are some upgrades outside of runs, such as increasing the town count and getting occasional arrow volleys, but I would have liked to see that side expanded further. Things like recruitable troops, more defensive options, or different towers could add another layer to the gameplay. As it stands, enemies tend to focus heavily on the player, so it can often be easier to pull them away from the bridge rather than actually defend it. Because of that, the bridge itself can sometimes feel less important than I expected. Still, I had a really good time with it. If you enjoy Halls of Torment or Va…