Despite its rather simple graphical fidelity and basic automated gameplay, this game does a lot to make everything feel exciting with tons of juice and nice touches! Alongside that, the game also did a decent job at having various enemy types each with their own AI patterns (instead of the usual boring survivors-style dummies that just chase you), lots of weapon upgrades, some events that pop up, and different arenas which make you improvise how best to survive. I think there's certainly a lot of potential here and overall the game feels fun.
However, one of my biggest issues with the game was its pacing. It just felt like it was really repetitive and took way too long to get to a decent level of difficulty to make me engaged. On my first playthrough, when it came to around 100 kills and I was still fighting the same boring mooks, I was seriously considering quitting and not looking back. Eventually yes, it does introduce more enemy types and events to makes things more exciting, but they felt like they were spaced out too far and kept recycling before moving on.
It didn't help either that the game felt a bit directionless and pointless. Yes, there is a ranking system and I'm getting points and such, but it just felt like it was doing the same ol' same ol' and didn't really entice me to play again, especially considering I've have to go through that slow start again. I feel like if it had more unique events like the bomb event happen more frequently, and perhaps if it forced you to go to new arenas on a timer instead of on pickup and they got progressively more intense instead of random, and if you faced mini or final bosses and they unlocked higher difficulty modes or checkpoints or whatever, I'd be more inclined to play since it would feel like I can gauge my progression and it would keep things spicy.
There were also some other slight annoyances like how the arenas just feel so bloody claustrophobic and the enemies get so dense that it just feels silly and doesn't allow for much movement or space for player expression. Also the Ultra takes so long to charge up that it makes me want to not use it, and considering how powerful it is, I'm surprised it doesn't treat it with more reverence like having a special gauge that goes all rainbowy when its fully charged or something: having it just be some boring numbers in the corner makes me forget I even have it.
In addition to all the gameplay-related stuff above, I did find it odd that, despite the game being played with the keyboard, the menu navigation is done with the mouse, which isn't use in game. I would expect to be able to do things like hit enter to start the game and use the arrow keys to select ships: feels weird to be forced to use a whole other control scheme and then switch back when the game starts.
I do think the game is pretty solidly put-together and juicy and has good potential, but it's rough because, well, you can't escape the fact that it is inevitably going against so many other Survivors games on the market like Holocure and Halls of Torment and even Picayune Dreams and so on, and this, while nice, just doesn't quite have the amount of variety in its content, addictive sense of progression, or any other special selling point like a story or whatever that those games have to set it apart. Still had a good time with it while it lasted, but I just can't see me sticking with it without a more powerful hook.
