January 1, 2025 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 1

Game: Vampire Survivors

Platform: Epic
Released: Oct 20, 2022
Devs: Poncle
Library Date: Dec 19, 2024
Unplayed: 13d
Playtime: 1h44m

Vampire Survivors is a top-down pixel-art roguelite survival shoot-em-up.

I'd seen a few people on social media mentioning Vampire Survivors approvingly, and as it was the first game of Epic's Daily Christmas Giveaways, I'd grabbed it.

Playnite's header artwork didn't give away that it was a pixel-art game, which wouldn't have stopped me from playing it, but might have put me off picking it as my first game of the year.

That would have been my loss, because Vampire Survivors' gameplay loop almost immediately overcame my resistance to pixel-art.

You start out with one character unlocked. It's an auto-shooter, so all you need to do is kill mobs, avoid other mobs, and collect crystals & gold dropped by the dead mobs to level up.

Levelling up, gives you a choice between 3-4 weapon or defence addition or upgrade options to choose from. Occasionally, a boss mob will show up; kill it and it will drop a chest, which has gold, and 1-3 upgrades, but apparently can have 5 upgrades, too.

The runs are relatively short, and you can use the gold collected to upgrade your character, or unlock other characters with different skills.

It has that "just one more run" juice in spades. So much for "play for 15 minutes and write my review". Almost two hours later, I only quit out because my child was asking for help with their PC.

When I got home this afternoon, I ended up sinking another half hour into it before my NYE exhaustion caught up with me, and I'm tempted to open it up again now.

Vampire Survivors is:

5: Excellent

@tazgetroete ganz das #SED feeling mit der #wagenknecht - nicht wahr genossInnen in #thuringen ??
#fckbsw #BSW #bswunwählbar #topdown #demokratie #

March 10, 2024 - Day 435 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 470

Game: Black Skylands

Platform: Steam
Released: Aug 16, 2023
Installed: Mar 10, 2024
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 19m

Black Skylands is game number five in the March Humble Choice Bundle; it's a top-down pixel-art steampunk-themed... game. It's a category mash-up that's part-twin-stick shooter, part-open-world-action-adventure, part crafting-sandbox.

Within that mix of genres, I had trouble situating myself within the gameplay that I connected with it.

It's another game that I'm going to give another shot and see how I feel about it once I get a bit further into the game.

For now, I'll say that Black Skylands is:

3: OK

February 22, 2024 - Day 418 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 454

Game: Deadly Days

Platform: Steam
Released: Sep 19, 2019
Installed: Feb 2, 2024
Unplayed: 20d
Playtime: 15m

Deadly Days is a top down pixel-art strategy roguelite set in the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse caused by chemically tainted hamburgers.

Your goal is to eventually locate and destroy the source of the hamburgers, and honestly it just didn't grab me at all.

Deadly Days is also:

2: Meh