Vampire Survivors

My new addiction; Vampire Survivors is a unique and deceptively simple rogue light where you only use a single input to dodge around hordes of enemies as you pick up auto-attacking weapons. The complexity lies in creating awesome synergies of these weapons that allow you to become the bullet hell that mows down thousands of *cough* legally distinct *cough* but very Castlevania-inspired monsters and creatures. Each run is an endorphin rush fuelled by lucky pickups, great music, satisfying sound effects and cool new weapons. It’s no shock that the developer here used to work on gambling apps and has put his talents to better use in a game with all the satisfying dopamine hits, but importantly lacking the predatory monetization. The ultimate “just one more run” game.

The game hooks you with a simple dopamine rush you're getting from annoyingly long chest openings, and with killing thousands of enemies on the screen. After you "survive" a couple of times (that is, you were able to hold on for 30 minutes), you realize that the game has nothing more to offer. It has a lot of achievements, which exist only to give you any kind of incentive to continue to play, which is meaningless; it has tens of characters, all of which are just the same character basically sans different weapon starts and some small differences in stats; quite a number of levels, all of which are huge and empty maps that doesn't make any sense to explore since the best tactic is just kill enemies in some area and collect experience rubies over and over. Speaking of tactic - there is none, you're basically either unstoppable or you get overwhelmed at some point, there is no in-between. Good fun for few hours, then you should probably move on to some other, more fleshed out dopamine rush games such as Synthetik or Hades.

A devious scheme to waste your time. Far more honest about it than ARPGs and gachas and other loot-type games, which I respect a lot.