Sodaman

Adding to the negative review pile, buyers beware! AI usage! The bloody nerve to not disclose AI use until *after* the 1.0 release, *after* being featured in a humble bundle? Truth be told, I don't buy the claim AI was limited to just concept art and voice acting - the game runs and plays like a hot mess, and you can find reddit posts from a few years ago where the devs were asking about AI usage for language translations. Sure would explain the bizarre writing... and if it isn't AI? Welp, you still have a slightly less dirty turd. AI aside, this game fails at being an engaging roguelike. Runs and objectives feel like slogs (which other roguelikes with similar run lengths manage to avoid), balancing feels as if it was decided by throwing darts at a board, and the galore of technical issues you can read up here should say plenty. Seriously, want a good game of this kind? If you don't have Vampire Survivors already, I'd recommend Army of Ruin, a really great clone of that game. As for this game, however? Shady devs, flimsy game, tiring 100%, AI weirdness... just stay away from this one.

I like the game, quite a bit actually, but kind of disappointed that some of the Steam Achievements seem not to be working... :(

Bottom line up front, the story is amazing and the gameplay is a good mix between vampire survivors and every other bullet hell that came up after that came out. Only play this game if you are ready to chug soda's and kill evil alien scum.

pixelated survivors and the sodaman!

Soda Man is a relatively well-executed isometric bullet heaven featuring gorgeous pixel art and animation. Its aesthetic is an entertaining collision of modern cyberpunk, Duke Nukem-style irreverence, anime, and dark sci-fi fantasy—all blended together into one gloriously chaotic package with a lighthearted sense of humor. The Soda theme is interesting and reminded me of Mullet MadJack, the weapons and accessibility options are well-executed, the supporting cast are unimpressive cardboard archetypes, and the upgrades are ridiculous in the most awesome ways possible. Where the game stumbles is its voice acting. It appears to have been generated by a fairly mediocre AI, and, more importantly, it feels as though the developers never performed even the most basic quality checks. The AI attempts to literally pronounce written laughter ("hehehehe") and even reads aloud placeholder censorship symbols for profanity, resulting in lines like "number, percent, dollar, exclamation" instead of simply treating "#%$!" as a censored curse. These moments are so frequent and jarringly unnatural that they repeatedly pull you out of the experience. Ironically, the written dialogue itself isn't nea…

This is the definition of value for money