Brotato

Brotato is a wave-based bullet heaven no wait come back.

Listen. Just let me pitch you on it. First and foremost: Brotato is vividly evocative of older, stat-driven Flash games from the likes of Kongregate and Newgrounds. Not a lot of that around these days, a rare treat.

Beyond that: hundreds of items, dozens of characters, all of which incentivize or outright force a different approach. Each character has its own unlock attached to winning with it, always an item. Other achievements unlock characters representative of them. Play, not time, is rewarded. No meta progression, with every run winnable right out the gate.

Know how so many bullet heaven games end up feeling samey run to run? The diverse itemization and the fact that pivots are both possible and encouraged sends that issue packing. No fusing different weapons, no items needed for evolutions. Level your weapons by combining like with like, or just swap them out directly.

Like your games crunchy? Brotato has so many stats, all of which matter, all of which are mechanically distinct. Increased through level ups or adjusted with items, almost all of which involve bumping one or more stats up, others down.

Feel like bullet heaven runs turn into a monotonous slog of running in circles? The shop > wave > shop rhythm breaks things up nicely, and the game encourages and enables diving through packs even if you can't kill them. You can even save and continue.

It just does so much to address so many of the core problems of the bullet heaven subgenre, solving what often feel like fundamental issues with almost callous ease. So much so, in fact, that it's made it into my evergreen games, the sort I play when I just want a bit of fun without the commitment of a new or longer game. No higher compliment from a mechanically-driven player, really.