The action roguelite thread

I enjoyed the demo of Into The Pit a couple of weeks ago but wondered how the full experience would pan out with regards to the upgrades, dungeon layouts and enemies. I adored the visuals though, particularly in the village; it’s a got a kind of iridescent, acidic haze to it. Picked it up on Steam but didn’t realise it was on Game Pass!

I am enjoying it but due to the frenetic pace I have only played probably 20 minutes of it so far.


Remember I, Dracula: Genesis, featured in the first post of the thread, which I mentioned it seemed abandoned by the devs?

Well, it just received an update… and a new name. Now it’s called Doomsday Hunters.

Nice! I’ve owned this for ages and still haven’t played it. Updates have been real slow, not sure when 1.0 is coming, if ever.

Oh wow, that’s great. I hate it when EA games get abandoned, so sad.

I am sure @Juan_Raigada would approve of the second recommendation! 😁

Ziggurat 2 is out

Features
11 heroes
56 weapons
24 amulets
54 enemies
219 perks

I’ll tell you what I want, what I really really want…

The spice girls were very forward thinking

In my effort of finding a similar game to Gunfire Reborn, I have been playing Ziggurat 2, but yeah, still nothing that compares favorably against GR.

-The weapons are fantasy themed, and it happens the same that happens with almost every fantasy FPS since the beginnings of the genre (Heretic onwards), where firing a magic wand that does ‘psh psh psh’ feels less good than firing a badass smg. Same with the magical books, staffs, etc. Even when you have a magical spells that seems like broadly based on the idea of a shotgun, with a wide fire pattern, it still doesn’t feel as good as a good shotgun.
-Even if we were to forget that issue, in general, weapons are less animated and sound less good. They aren’t terrible, but they are a bit mediocre.
-They also offer less what I feel is weapon variety, with all of them being pretty similar as they all fit inside 4 niches: starting wands (that you will forget once you have two normal weapons), staffs, books, and alchemy (crossbows, Blunderbuss, cannons). So all staffs feel similar, except the elemental type changes and some small gameplay difference (short burst vs long burst, auto, projectiles fired in a cross pattern, etc).
-Nor they change as as much as in GR with random properties or upgrades. And forget anything fancy like elemental combos or gemini inscriptions.
-Gameplay wise, not having weapon reloads nor grenades nor melee hurts the depth.
-It has 11 heroes, but again, less depth in in GR, stats wise they only vary in health and ammo capacity, not in movement/shields. They only have one usable ability and the rest are small passive effects. They of course, don’t have the ascensions of GR that make each run more unique. IMO they should have halved the number of heroes and made them even more different.
-The metaprogression is terrible, it’s the standard straight, small and boring ugprades: “+5 hp”, “+5% gold”, “+2% exp” , “+4% ammo”, “+2% dmg”. etc
-Perks are also less interesting that scrolls. They have a good numbers of them!, and they aren’t bad, but they are… standard in the genre. Should i take “Minions move 5% slower” , “Champion enemies have -10% health” ," -5% Fire Rate. +12% Damage", “Armor: -10% Basic damage received” , “Increases Damage dealt by Alchemy weapons by 15%. Decreases damage for other weapon categories by 5%”, “You earn some Mana when picking up Coins” or “Increases Fire Rate while stationary by 20%” ? (All taken from the wiki) Whatever.
-Enemy variety seems good seeing the number in the encyclopedia. But each one has two or even three reskinned versions, so the real variety is notably smaller. Even worse, 80% aren’t very interesting, you have three ‘melee rushers’, that makes you run backwards while firing, and you have lots and lots of projectile throwers. Only a few do something extra, like exploding upon death, or firing with a beam instead of a projectile, or having a shield, or being able to side strafe sometimes. Heck, I think I have spoiled most already.
-Something I noticed in my last games is that lots of enemies are just… boring to fight. In reality, with a few exceptions, lots of them move very slowly, so the moment to moment gameplay is similar to firing immobile turrets. If they hit you sometimes is because they know to aim to where you will be, not to your current position, apart from spawning all around (and behind you).
-Another contributing factor is the enemy encounter design (if design is the word…). Lots of times they just throw a bunch of enemies of two types and that’s it.
-Environments are all different themes applied to the same procedural dungeon, it doesn’t get to break the pace like GR with small pieces of open world in beaches or in a desert.

I knew it was gonna be up your alley!

In early access now, nice. The new variety in environments look great. Between that, weapon attachments, and the new chrono trooper class I think I’m in danger of buying another game in EA.

He posted an article explaining the new features

A review of the status of EA games:

Gunfire Reborn 1.0 will be out tomorrow.

Nova Drift status is still the same. The promised content in 2021 is still not here, and we are close to end of year.

Adore devs say they are close to 1.0 version. Here it’s their last video

Rogue Spirit will increase in content a lot in the coming months, or so they say

Roboquest launched 0.7 at the start of the month, and it’s looking better than before. They replaced their ‘cores’ feature (that gave boring passive small buffs) by a more normal ‘items’ you pick up on a run, with different effects. They also have added weapon mods, that modify the alternate fire of the weapon.
They promise a content update for December.

I’m interested in Voidigo, they are updating the with new content at good pace. Anyone have it?

Orbital Bullet has a new trailer

GetsuFumaDen: Undying Moon had an update with a new weapon class, whips, and a new difficulty tier, easier than the default

Never Return is still very Early Access, but they are updating it at very quick pace.

Source of Madness has a new biome and class. Here is a small video

Finally, Unexplored 2 is looking superb, you can look at their twitter for updates
https://twitter.com/PlayUnexplored

The main developer of Unexplored 2, Joris Dormans, recently wrote an article on the procedural level generation in the sequel that was illuminating, especially if you’ve played the current build, where the first version of it was implemented.

It seems to want to push the cyclic level generation of Unexplored 1 by having a syntax that allows abstract elements of the level geometry to be organized in that cyclic generation process. The result is some quite compelling looking lines of exploration as well as some great screenshots of the resulting levels.

Dead Cells is the one action roguelite I most desperately want to enjoy but can’t. My brain just cannot parse its combat. I’ve only beaten the final boss once at the lowest difficulty level, and that was with a randomly overpowered electric whip run that snowballed. I haven’t even come close again in like 40-ish hours (!)

Love to see the great support that team pours into it.

i think in the last update they put a training room where you can fight against the enemy you want, and test against bosses. You may want to check it if you haven’t.

In my case, I don’t know why, but the enemies just bore me. They just feel so pointless. I’ve advanced a decent bit through the game, but the game simply holds very little interest for me. I can’t really say why because I enjoy quite a few other roguelites.