Wait, what’s an “auto-shooter”?
Something I just made up to refer to games like Vampire Survivors, 20 Minutes till Dawn, etc where you move the character but you don’t attack, it’s automatic.
Is the game out?
No, but there is a demo. In fact that’s the thing… the demo isn’t a 15 minutes experience, it can be played for a dozen of hours at least, thanks to the build variety, that’s why I made a thread for it already. I don’t know how much content the final game will have, but I suspect the demo is less a ‘demo’ and more the current build of the entire game.
Still, why I should play it?
This is a simple game, you always play the same square arena, trying to survive hordes of enemies. The star of the show here is the build variety. It’s great. You combine up to 6 weapons, character class, stat upgrades and many items to do all kinds of thematic builds. Spears, bazookas, smgs, tasers, punches, just in your defensive options you have many options, you can go with armor, speed, auto regen, big hp pool, leech, dodge chance…
Just look at this playlist for the build variety:
The dev of SNKRX (another auto-shooter) recently announced that they were ending further development, but suggested Brotato as a good alternative:
And if you really liked SNKRX and you wanna play more games like it the best I can do is recommend some. Ever since last year many games that are around SNKRX’s design area have been released, most famously Vampire Survivors and its clones.
However the game that I liked the most and that feels closest is a game called Brotato. It has many of the same ideas and systems, and incidentally it also solves quite a few design problems I was having with the rewrite. It’s just a really good and fun game. Currently there’s only a demo available but the full version should come out in a few months. If you liked SNKRX you’ll probably like this, so give it a try!
One interesting thing with Brotato is that the weapons have tags. Accumulating multiple weapons with the same tag gives you bonuses, Auto chess style. The different characters tend to lean into that by being especially good with melee or ranged, or something more specialized like blades or primitive.
It’s a much more “active” game than VS in that the movement and such is much faster (though I guess closer to the faster modes in VS, which I haven’t played).
Oh that’s a good point, it is indeed pretty similar to the SNKRX game, with how you mix several weapons and upgrades, and you move but it shoots automatically.
And speaking of similarities, this dev also made previously this roguelite:
Which I had my eye put on it time ago. Same aesthetic but more Dead Cells/Hollow Knight in gameplay, and it seems it also have tons of build variety (300+ items)
Well, I failed to be careful. Fun game! Weapon merging plus unlimited/stackable items is a good amount of complexity. Would like a more interesting armor/shield system.
I’m playing less now, after the first 15 hours, but still it’s a nice game to have when you want to play something but that is low-commitment, and not something super complex or super long.
New stuff today:
And several balance changes, including a rework of the Chunky character
Chunky => +25% Max HP modifications, +1% Damage for every 3 Max HP, +3 HP healed from consumables, -100% Lifesteal, -50% HP Regeneration and Dodge modifications, -100% Speed modifications, changed starting weapons
The achievements are mostly centered around winning with each of the different characters and, since each usually requires a different type of build to be successful, knocking out each one was interesting and an enjoyable way to experience what the game has to offer.
I still think this is better than Vampire Survivors, simply because its visuals are super clean and the achievements essentially guide you through the game.
Congrats! Some of those were very very tough for me. I’m trying to win on Danger 5 with all characters and the last few are proving pretty miserable, lol
I got the Danger 5 achievement using the character I found the easiest to win with at Danger 0, and even then it felt pretty challenging. I doubt very much I could get even a third of the other characters to D5!
