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Joined 6 months ago
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Cake day: June 30th, 2024

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  • Combat Complex

    Twin-stick shooter against various bugs and robots with some ARPG gearing, and the action here is fantastically tight with probably three key factors:

    • Enemies target you but hit each other, so you manage their attacks to help your fighting instead of just staying out of trouble.
    • “Frenzy” orb pickups, which act a bit like combo meter fuel except instead of chaining hits you make frequent choices about whether an orb drop is worth chasing, keeping you close to danger.
    • Instant gun switching with overheating instead of reloading, so you fight hard and switch constantly between your three guns to keep any one from overheating while getting the best out of their specific properties.

    I play a lot of twin-stick and top-down shooters, and this does a great job mixing the arcade twin-stick feel of high intensity fending off a swarm with tactical top-down dungeon crawling elements, and it’s just really special feeling to play. The core action feels not just well designed but like it was made just for me, and I’m genuinely glad someone made it (or is making it, since it’s early access). Plus, it’s extraction style instead of being a roguelite, so you’re always right at the best action while still getting procedural levels, so each run is a little different.


  • I used to be very patientgamer, but my patience model changed after finding again and again that buying late meant devs had wholly moved on from a game by the time I got it, and would hardly ever do basic needed fixes, things that needed to have been talked about earlier in the project. I also noticed how some early access sales would take years for the price to go up and then back down again for what amounted to only a few dollars of savings. Savings that, as I watch games I’m interested in fail in obscurity over and over, I don’t feel quite right about strictly withholding from the few devs taking chances on such projects for me, on top of not being around to try and help the project deliver a better game to players.

    So, now I do buy some games in early access or even newly released, where I can poke the dev while they are still around, and my patience includes waiting for games to get through those after-buying growing pains instead of just waiting for them to drop into the discount bins, mostly forgotten by their devs and players both.

    I’m still generally more strictly price-patient on most anything larger scale, both by devs and by audience.