Katanaut

I didn’t expect much going into it and was pleasantly surprised. The Good Gameplay. The game feels nice and fluid. It’s a great pleasure to slash through hordes of enemies while utilizing the enormous variety of skills, weapons, and perks. Variety. The game has lots of different playstyles and unlockables that shape the way you play the game. I’m sure that everyone will be able to find something suitable. My personal favorite was the “slow motion” playstyle, because I was able to clear entire rooms within seconds of “real” time. Progression. The game has several ways to become stronger, and each is impactful in its own way. You can unlock new stuff by just playing the game while earning money to buy upgrades for your katana or your character. Progression feels natural and doesn’t require grinding. Visuals. While I wouldn’t call the game gorgeous, I simply cannot avoid mentioning how juicy and vibrant the art of this game is. All the different effects, enemies, animations, bosses, and just about everything in this game looks good when the action is going on. The only thing lacking, in my opinion, is map design, because after a certain amount of playtime it becomes stale and boring. Speedrun potential. The game is relatively young, and there are not that many people playing the game yet, so getting to the top of the leaderboard is an accomplishable task even if you don’t have time to waste your entire life perfecting your skills in this game. I felt much more engaged knowing that if I play well enough, I might just make it to the top. Sound and music. The music consists of a nice variety of EDM tracks, mostly synthwave. I enjoyed it but didn’t pay much attention to it due to how involved I was in playing the game. The sound is just as vibrant as the art is. Everything sounds good and responsive; nothing else to say here. The Story (?). The question mark is because I didn’t pay much attention, and even after playing it for 30 hours, I still don’t really know what was going on in the story. Why is this in the good, then, you ask? Because I think the story and setting are interesting—unique, even; it’s just that I don’t really care about the story much in games like this. I just feel like if you dig deep, you will find something quite intriguing. The Cat. You can pet the cat. The Bad UI. It doesn’t look good, at least for me. Compared to the game’s general art, the UI’s art feels shallow and cheap. Functionally, it is completely fine. Randomness. This is, again, my personal gripe with this game. I tried speedrunning. And what do you know, results are heavily influenced by luck. And not in the way you think. I am completely fine with the game being a roguelike and being random; I just wish that this “randomness” was more consistent. You see, the way you speedrun this game is that you spawn, ignore everything, and run as fast as possible to the level exit, repeating until the boss. The exit’s location is entirely random. You can scout the entire level, unable to find the exit, only to discover that it was located at the very edge of the map in a random hallway. There are some maps with predetermined spawns, but those are scarce. I feel like you could make this much more bearable if exit spawns were either consistent or hinted at, like in Risk of Rain 2, where the stage exit is indicated by barely visible particles that an experienced player could use to his advantage. Random BS. Because the game is young, it is littered with different kinds of unpleasant surprises. Like the way some enemies spawn damaging projectiles even after death, resulting in lost health from seemingly nowhere. Or like when some random projectile from 5 seconds ago bounces off the wall and damages you while you were choosing weapons or checking your map. Or like... you get what I mean. These moments are not that frequent, but they are frequent enough to make the experience worse. Overall: 7/10. Very solid roguelite with good variety, great art and