I don’t remember how I found it, I think I was on a bullet hell kick from Vampire Survivors, Gallowspire Survivors, Yet Another Zombie Survivors, Tiny Rogs, or Hells of Torment.
HOLY COW does this game work for me. The grind is fun. I will finish up a game and jump into the next one. My insomnia kicked up and I came down to play around midnight. Next thing I know, it’s 3:30 am! Wow. I even bought controllers for both my computers as I find it (and bullet hell games) better on them. I got it July 2 and already have 183 hours in it, which puts it in my top 4 games in Steam for hours.
After that long, I finally beat a boss, and I’m waning a bit on it but still enjoy the grind. The gameplay itself is so fun for me!
Anyone else playing it? Anyone else know games like it?
I watched a video reviewing it 9 months ago. Have you tried Tiny Rogues? That seemed like a fun game; the graphics are more lo-fi, but there’s a fair amount of depth to it. EDIT: You mentioned Tiny Rogues in your initial post, duh!
There’s also the classic Binding of Isaac, of course.
I have watched a few retromation videos to get a feel of a few games. Thanks, @hogarth!
I really like Magicraft. The game gives three saves and I’m bouncing between two saves, keeping them roughly in line with each other, in terms of playtime and resources. The grind is just fun for me. I lose, or win, and jump back in and see how far I can get with the random spells I get. Sometimes I try and make a build that someone shared but usually it’s better to try and make what I get work.
I picked up Balatro and enjoy that but obviously except for roguelike, very different style of play.
Be My Horde is a Vampire Survivors type game that I’m enjoying. However, I think I got to the max of the EA content because there doesn’t seem to be anything else for me to upgrade. Still fun.
Nova Drift was released, so out of EA. I have found it tougher, maybe in part because I’m out of practice. There is supposed to be an ending now with a final boss monster, so I’m working toward that.
Binding of Isaac may be my most-played video game. Even though I never got good enough to earn all the achievements, I was able to complete almost all the characters prior to the final expansion (which I barely touched).
If the thing that turns you on about Magicraft is the combinations of randomly acquired abilities, I don’t think any game ever really topped it. Later roguelikes did other stuff better, like Hades’ art and story or Noita’s physics, but Isaac is the king of a deep item pool full of wild combinations.
You do want to get “Rebirth” rather than the original, which was made in Flash and is a bit clunky. You don’t have to buy any DLC to start; there’s a crapload of content in just the base game. Like hundreds of hours of content.
Thanks for the recommendation! I have been looking at Binding of Isaac but haven’t gotten it yet. Maybe because I didn’t know what it was and only saw the character in Minecraft, when he killed me! I need to get over that.
I tried Noita but something about it didn’t work for me. Makes me sad as it seems good.
I picked up Sifu, and some others, via Humble Bundle subscription. Not sure if I will stay more than this month but got a lot for the value and Sifu is fun.
I’ve been deeply into Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor for a while now. It’s a single-player bullet-hell spinoff of the excellent online squad shooter, Deep Rock Galactic, about dwarves in space fighting giant bugs while mining rare minerals. Still in Early Access, but it’s already a highly complete game, and a ton of fun. Highly recommend both the original game and the survivor spin-off