Jack McLachlan

I got the game for free with PS plus, and with anything free it *feels* better than it actually is. The game is incredibly barebones, 2 guns, 2 swords, 2 types of raider, 4 enemy types, 7-ish traps, the developers never gave out any maps for you to play on and rely entirely on other people to make maps for the community (hence why it was free week 1, we're to make content for others, not the devs.). And this is really where it hits the fan because of it. Maps can either be incredibly fun or tedious or brutal or mind-blowing. A majority of which are monotonous, remembering where each trap is as you try to navigate a twisted corridor of differently coloured blocks and enemies, others are death-pits with several dozen traps and enemies in one room and you somehow have to get in there to get the meagre amount of loot and the endorphin rush of success. As for gameplay, controls are smooth, quick and functional, shooting is on a trajectory, swords are swift and can block projectiles. I enjoy the grappling hook the most and can say the gameplay would be terrible without it, there isn't a thrill so high as going through a base with nothing but your hook as quickly as possible. Building your own base is somewhat fun, I made one and had a few chuckles thinking how I wanted to make a FUN labyrinth since I was inviting a stranger to explore my nefarious dungeon, I wanted them to have FUN while doing so. Some of the traps need exact placement to work properly or rely on the visitor rushing in without a care. My base got a few kills but I realise no one is going to spend time treating my base with any care or consideration, so all the interesting details go to waste. Which makes me realise why so many bases are either tedious corridor slogs or tiny, brutal death-pits: the more someone dies in your base, the more passive money you receive as you go raiding for loot. Touching on the loot, each base has 'genmat' (genetic material) which is used to feed the base boss/chimera project. The game has several currencies and need for different EXP for each of the vendors to level up. Levelling up or buying anything costs a LOT. A difficult raids gets me between 200-300 of a currency, exp from the raid means I can level up the 'chimera project' who gives me a bit of currency, about 300 of each per 4-5 successful raids. Most upgrades costs between 700-950. Even then, there's not much to really buy, some upgrades mean you can pick up your dropped arrows from further away or swing your sword faster. For base building you need to research each trap and enemy type and then mods, this can get expensive very quickly. Overall, no story, slightly less cliche wasteland setting of looking for genetic material in a world of clones. Gets a bit repetitive but the game is a good time-wasting game with some fun brain-storming puzzles. Once they start putting the actual content into the game I might come back for more. I can't imagine it will be free once they start doing so It'll be hit or miss for me on what is added.