English translation is bad MTL and some texts are even left untranslated (an example in the word salad). you have been warned. This is also the reason for the negative review.

It is basically risk of rain 2 with anime waifus. The characters and locations look nice.
You unlock items with (so far only ingame) achievements.

All in all the game is fun and quite good (especially for a 10€ game) though I would recommend to wait for the translation to be improved if you do not want to figure out what abilities, awakening upgrades and items do exactly.

My impression of the characters so far:

- Alice (bunny girl): really fun to play but rather weak mainly due to the limitation on the main attack (especially on the first run when you have 0 talent upgrades (better stats and lower cooldowns) and not all items unlocked. In my second run with the unlocked items and some talent upgrades the damage potential was way better)

- Lea (Archer): fun to play and great damage output after getting some attack speed upgrades

- Takehime (black hair sword girl): kinda weird at the start but after getting some good items and getting used to her skills it started to get fun, the run was terminated early by a crash though. Not really a fan of melee chars in these kind of games so it was kind of surprising how fun it got to play with her in part by chaining skills together to cover more ground.

- Shibako (shiba inu girl): quite strong and fun with short skill cooldowns

- Shi Miao (green haired sword girl): rather strong though dealing with the flying enemies is a pain at the start of a run, her kit wasn't my cup of tea though so I'm not the biggest fan of her (again not a fan of melee in these kinds of game)


Edit 16.01.25: Added impression of more characters + better clarification on why the review is negative + moved the word salad down
Edit 17.01.25: Added impressions of the last 2 playable characters and 2 more encountered issues

Word Salad about encountered issues / annoying things:

peak English translation: "After switching 5 You can choose whether to drink the shrinking or enlarging potion in a second. > Reduce movement speed increase 50% > Reduced damage caused 50%. Increase movement speed reduction 50% > Increased damage caused 50%"
"Laughing Cat Missile Increase jump height 100% Decrease reduction 50% / Airborne speed increased 0%" (I didn't leave words out and the % numbers are correct btw.)

you have an indicator to show the direction of the portal but 50% of the maps I played had a portal / boss arena removed from the explore able area that had to be bridged with a jump pad (which does not appear on the minimap even with the rare item that shows all interact able objects in the area) and the portal indicator does not point to this jump pad making the search on the large maps (with potentially large vertical gaps) rather tedious
Not a fan of tiles / whole floor in boss arenas doing damage / freezing you, while facing a boss and adds

One boss does an aoe aura with a visual indicator but that indicator is smaller than the hitbox of the attack meaning that you get damage while "outside" of the aoe.
Got the same boss in my third run and managed to burst him down before it could do anything but then the game crashed.

alice (the bunny girl): she has two modes light and heavy. in light the main attack is an assault rifle which can be upgraded to crit a lot with a awakening buff, the problem is that you can only use the main attack for a few seconds before you need to let it rest for around the same amount of time to get the full burst duration again. You can reduce the heat build up later with the hero talent upgrade (dont know yet by how much).

Attack speed seems to increase the speed at which you deplete your firing time and the speed at which you get it back, it does not decrease the time till it recharges though.
To keep attacking you can switch to the heavy mode, where you have a separate ammo count.

In heavy mode your main attack is a slow aoe cannon, which has mild single target damage (with the lack of crits and ammo though with the q skill (30 sec cooldown) you also throw a grenade when shooting for a few seconds (not that your ammo would last longer).

And you have multiple (3-4) seconds of cooldown for the mode switch (unless you get the awakening buff to reduce it by 1 second? didnt seem to do anything in my second alice run)

Her passive skill description "Jump count increased1Next" seems to indicate that you should have 2 jumps from the start, but you dont so I assume that passive is currently broken.

Shi Miao: her right click skill throws a sword that you can teleport to by pressing E... you also use E to open chests and the teleport takes priority... so be mindful of swatting flyiers with that skill if you want to open chests :D

You can also use that skill on a certain map on buildings to put yourself into "horny jail" aka wallclipping into an empty room with no exit. You can get out the same way if you are lucky.

Ronin boss: After you "kill" him he commits sudoku which causes massive aoe damage, one of my runs got ended by killing both of em at the same time and trying to activate the portal (I forgot about the aoe) and got killed from 100% hp by both of their hits (no hp reducing items btw)

Boss arena: I only encountered the type with holes in the ground once so it seems kinda rare. The bug was that a few steps away from the hole I fell through the ground. I had double jump and reacted quickly so it wasn't a big problem, was shocking though

This is basically Risk of Waifu 2. The devs have very explicitly mentioned their inspiration, and the game plays almost identically to it.

The good news is that they have taken all the best parts about it.

• There is a varied and deep selection of characters who all play uniquely to each other, with a mix of melee and varying forms of ranged attacks.
  
• Awakenings are very impactful, not just raw stat bonuses but help you unlock more of your character's power as the run continues.
  
• Skills are very creative, fun, and have both good spectacle and practicality. My favorite is Shibako's dropping a giant Shiba Inu statue on enemies to crush them to death.
  
• There is a wide variety of interesting items with varied effects and drawbacks that aren't just "do X amount more damage," it's "shoot lightning with every shot, that helps you do X amount more damage, in a cool way."
  
• They nail the feeling of power climbing and stacking items till you get to that OP build where you can't really die.
  
• There are absurdly powerful enemies and spawn tactics like new move sets, optional difficulties, that will guarantee you will die anyway despite that OP-ness.

It also has its unique pros.

• Anime tiddies. Yes, I'm a pervert. The characters are designed very well, they've got appealing character designs, and I enjoy all the adorable battle cries they make and how they move.
  
• The environments are very well crafted, with its own take on 90s synthwave and anime themes such as Techno Feudal Japan, being inside an "Aesthetic" level, and ROR2 references with the frozen wasteland.
  
• There's a wide variety of unique enemies that aren't just "generic bad guys and goblins." There's a design philosophy to each stage, so you can understand why you're being attacked by walking sound equipment and 80's computer speakers or cyberdemon ninjas.
  
• There's clearly a lot of passion and will to innovate on the ROR2 formula, than make it "This game, but with anime tiddy."

It has plenty of flaws.

• English translation is poor. MTL, poorly formatted despite that, and sometimes outright missing or inconsistent.
  
• Levels have preset layouts without any building blocks connecting each other, there's some obvious bandaiding together or disparate pieces with jump pads and teleporting you to dedicated boss arenas.
  
• It's obviously not as tightly wound and designed as ROR2, with its many secrets, item combinations, and ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ you can pull off.

These flaws can both be attributed to their small team size and the circumstances of their studio going bankrupt and needing to release this to get revenue. I'm not saying this to guilt you into buying it to help the poor indies; this is a Steam page, not a Kickstarter, judge this based on the product they offer you, not what it could be in time. I'm just saying this to warn you that, if things go wrong, there is a very good chance that this product might be all it ever could be, like what happened to another indie EA title I backed but never got off the ground, Neon Echo.

However, I think the game is worth it still.

• The core gameplay loop is solid. Very addictive, I've played for hours nonstop.
  
• Even with the lack of competent translations, the game has enough of a visual language and clarity to tell what the hell is going on.
  
• The developers clearly have skill, talent, and the drive to improve, being active in the forums, being open and honest about their struggles, and I believe they can turn this around, market favors them.

So, I say, if your appetite for risk and disappointment can handle it, grab this game if you like ROR2 and want to reward developers that don't just copy, they make a GOOD copy with their innovations and flavor to it. Even if, knock on wood, this is all the game will ever be, it's still a well-made endless looping roguelite where you blow ♥♥♥♥ up and ♥♥♥♥ blows you up just as quickly.

OK wow. I played the beta for this game back in October of 2023 when I found it during a search for new games to play. Boy oh boy I was not prepared for what this game had to offer. Since then I have been watching the development of this game and waiting for release, and seeing major improvements during the public playtest. The final release is smooth and bug free so far, and I think $10.00 is a bit much for the current state the game is in, however once some of the bugs are hammered out I think the price isn't too bad. the most glaring issue however is the translation to English. The grammar is very wrong and some items don't have a translation at all. All in all it's just basically ROR2 with Anime waifus so if you're into that then definitely play it.