Note: that I don’t like Vampire Survivours (or ‘like’ games).

So for me, it starts off on the wrong foot already.

But you can’t always help personal preference.

Attack

I hate that I have no control over the weapon.

It feels like an integral part of a game, but this thing has a mind of its own.

This goes for both timing, and direction.

Hitboxes

The hitboxes also feel wonky.

Maybe partly because of the “no control”.

But between:

• juggling the distance for the scythe to activate,
• it sweeping, and needing to be timed perfectly
• and also it not actually being able to hit because the enemy is too close;

…is just harrowing.

Movement blocked

Finally, the enemies block movement for the character player, which doesn’t feel right.

In horde games, you don’t want the player to be left stranded, or stuck.

In this one, I’ve definitely been not able to move due to enemies hemming me in.

C-C-COMBO

Between the movement block, the hitboxes, and the activation,

I feel like I’m not in control.

But also, I’ve also definitely had enemies get past my scythe, stop my movement, and then I can’t hit them or do anything.

Being bullied by pixels is super un-fun.

Quit

At this point, my will to try the game out any further is kinda not there any more.

And I can give a score to all the score-able categories.

So that’s what I do. And then move on to another game.

I might be terrible at this game, but I never saw any upgrades. I actually liked the acorns and having to think about your timing, but it was unclear to me how to attack initially. It seemed to be based on proximity to enemies rather than time based, so it was difficult to gauge and control. I thought the plant sprites were adorable, but the checkerboard background took me out of immersion a bit.

Decent game, though I think it would have benefited a lot from a bit of juice (screen shake, squash and stretch, sound effects, that kind of thing) to make it feel better to attack and kill enemies. Also would have liked some more frequent upgrades for the player, since the horde grows really quickly and the player can't really match it