I was suggested this game by my brother, who like me used to game a lot more than he does today. he doesn't often offer advice on games that I must try so when out of nowhere he came through and said that he LOVES this game, I didn't even use the free trial and just went out and bought it.
It's $15 on most platforms, but I got it on PS5.
When you first look at it, it just looks like some silly mobile game or for me personally, a game that I would normally avoid like the plague.
You start out on the bottom and have to work your way up on a field that continues to move slowly towards you until you eventually get to a boss at the end. You will not make it to the boss on your first try, it is mathematically impossible by design. You are meant to lose a few times and then acquire powerups that make the runs progressively easier.
Along the way, and this is where the game starts to have some sort of roguelike aspect to it, you will encounter temporary powerups that allow you to shoot other balls that do different kind of damage such as burn, poison, or electricity. There are a lot of different sorts of buffs that you can get.
You get other AOE effects along the way as well such as these horizontal or vertical lazers that hit everything in its path that seem like a good idea but for the most part they are too weak to really do you much good.
As you get further into your run you will start to be offered opportunities to evolve your balls to some pretty interesting combinations as well.
I don't know how many of these exist in the game, but it does seem like a lot. I think that it was made intentionally that there is no BEST of any of these so it's not like a run will be ruined if you don't happen upon exactly what you were hoping for the way that other roguelikes or rogue-lites do.
For the most part I hate all games that have "rogue" in the description with exceptions like Hades so when I found out that is what this game is, I wasn't excited but was still going to try it out because my brother so rarely suggests games to me.
What you end up with a game that is strangely addictive. When you finish a run you want to do another one and this is fine since the runs only last around 15 minutes maximum. Then, between rounds you end up going to this town-building portion of the game that is perplexing at first, but later on becomes your favorite part of the game.
You make various buildings and crops and the only way to actually harvest them or to build them is to send our whatever characters you have acquired up to that point and have them bounce around. Whatever they touch, you will harvest. Buildings are completed by having enough people run into it enough times. When buildings are completed they will either powerup all the characters that you have unlocked at that point, or they will unlock a new character who you can both use on the battlefield and will also participate in the gathering of future crops also.
I'm probably not doing it much justice here and I am glad that I didn't watch a video of the game before buying it because I likely wouldn't have bought it. However, and i say this as someone that really doesn't like rogue games or top-down mobile-looking games, this game is simply AWESOME.
I think the devs (or it might just be one guy) that made this game were aware of the fact that the trailer or gameplay video isn't really going to sell the game so that is why on most platforms anyway, there is a 1-hour free trial and if you have access to one of those I really suggest you get the free trial and at least have a try at it.
I think this game will appeal to almost anyone regardless of what kind of game they prefer. It's fast-paced, low-commitment, and just addictive enough that you look forward to playing it. There's only 1 button to hit in the actual gameplay and if you don't want to do that you can just turn it on to auto-shoot as fast as it can. it's simple and I can't really do justice to how surprised I am that I like this game as much as I do. There is no learning curve either, you can just get in there and play.
I don't know why it works, but it simply does.