Archvale

I hope you like dodging bullets? Archvale seems to take cues from many roguelites but applies it more into a straight forward progression type of game. You gain gear that upgrades your stats and along with several permanent upgrades as you progress in the areas, the game does give you multiple path at times but you'll generally get the hint you are the wrong place when the enemies are way too hard.

So an over the top view and you'll be shooting enemies while trying to survive as there is tons of bullets that will get to you from all angles. The most important thing I felt was raising your defense as you can't possibly dodging everything, but you'll definitely need some good motions going as the game does provide a quite high challenge. There's quite a few frustrating moments in the game, but it's soft of a fun frustration as you know you messed up and you can better yourself by playing just a little bit better. The game has villages, dungeons and all that, but after a few hours you will have seen everything it has to offer. So what makes you stick around til the end (my playthrough was roughly 13 hours)? The challenge. The game just ups the ante in every subsequent area and it just gets crazier and crazier. There's this great satisfaction aspect when you manage to beat a section, and it's a whole lot of fun getting there.

The indie size of the game does have its limitations and flaws, for example the game features melee weapons which are all very shit since you'll be taking a shit tons of it to the face trying to get close to the enemies. There's a wide variety of weapons available (which are upgradable too) but most of them feel irrelevant compared to the one with longest range + magic. There's sort of a balance issues with those, or it's just the intention that the player figures out that a certain type is really better than the rest. Several of the areas feel similar to the previous one, so I could understand the criticism for that... there is some repetition going but I do feel it keeps it interesting with the difficulty rising. It's not meant to be the biggest grand open world game anyway, it's a more simple title and it kind of those it well for that.

Overall quite enjoyed this and I would recommend it if you like games like Binding of Isaac or Enter the Gungeon but without the "rogue" aspect of always starting over. It's just a blast and kind of an adrenaline rush at times, the devs have made quite a fun little game with this one.