I've been playing this game a lot since I purchased it last year. It's another in the very modern genre of survival games that has you pitted against waves of monsters, like Vampire Survivors, only the genre is really just a niche of the traditional twin-stick shooter game, popularised by the likes of Geometry Wars, in the early 2000's and the likes of top down 2D shooter Smash TV in the early 90's
Despite being early access, it feels very complete.
For some reason it reminds me of the Bitmap Brothers' The Chaos Engine on the Amiga, although it's survival mode, not exploration, and the different guns aren't coupled to the different characters.
I have to say it's probably the best £2 I've spent on Steam, and one of this genre I've played recently. The gameplay and upgrade mechanic is very well balanced, to start with at least. and a lot of fun, and provides a lot of variety from game to game, with different upgrade choices potentiating your choice of gun and character. Each game is very different and how you choose to upgrade at each interval can result in a very different build, some breaking the game, and others too difficult to proceed.
My only gripe is the muted palette and graphical style, I don't much care for it, though the only time this upsets the game is that some power-ups make it hard to see what's going on, for example the ghost bullets* are big and slow and I find myself avoiding them. but it's a small flaw in an otherwise great game. You can select outlines to make things easier to see, which is a great option.
One thing that bothers me is that nearly all of the characters start off with 3 or 4 hp, except one, who has 7, though that character's strength is the high hp. which will change the way you play.
Also, what's with the trees, why can't I kill them if they can damage me?
I would love to see a gameplay mode, (or even better, new character with 5 or 6 hp), that has a random upgrade each level, instead of stopping the game and selecting them, this would encourage the player to try out all the upgrade combos, and provide a more intense, uninterrupted game.
I've only survived the 20 minutes once so far, and I still have a lot of characters and runes to unlock.
I've now completed the game on level 15 for most characters and weapons, though that's partly due to a recent update that added some variety to the difficulty with the use of 'soul hearts' - a slightly different form of hp.
There are still regular updates adding characters, new upgrades and play fields.
Great game, highly recommended!
Currently available on Steam
Featured in my Best Games for Steam Deck
Update - 30-01-23 I finally completed every achievement, first time I've ever done this with a game:
* this has been fixed with a recent update.