Disclaimer: I've finished the (base) game in 6 hours. I've gotten and used all the upgrades, weapons and gadgets. There's no value in replaying the game and I cannot understand how other reviewers have over dozens of hours in this game. Also for those who're looking for games with short pauses, this isn't it. Every run is up to 1 hour long, there are no checkpoints AND YOU CAN'T SAVE MID-GAME (which is simply silly).

Initially this game looks fun, the idea seems cool and I got it on sale so all good reasons to play a game. The gameplay itself started out alright and the lore felt like it had potential. Discovering secret rooms and traversing the wall was nice mostly because the background art was amazing, and the resource vacuum mechanic was nice to play around with. After about 3-4 hours of playing though, I've seen it all.

The game is just clearing a cave and then moving to next cave and clearing it and so on. There's nothing unique or interesting about any of them besides having different sprites for some caves. Eventually in your run you reach large maze-like caves which only makes the experience of exploring them more tedious and annoying.

In every run, you'll find TOO MANY different gadgets and weapons. Most of them aren't that useful or aren't worth improving in the first place. It just feels overwhelming and pointless, and because you'll be overloaded with them, whenever you find an upgrade it'll most likely be for an item you don't even use, which is nice.

After dying you're allowed to upgrade your ship and it feels like every upgrade is only meant to help you play the game less and sprint to the finish as quickly as possible. On my last run I wasn't even really focused on getting resources or exploring because my ship was overpowered and much of the mining was done by it anyway. I solely focused on drilling straight into the wall and looking for (spoiler) the keys that'll unlock the ending.

The lore, which I thought had potential, was very disappointing. You'll find pieces of the story scattered throughout the caves but they don't amount to much. The overall story is unfortunately pretty bland and shallow and the ending is very anti-climactic.

On a personal note, I was ready to quit this game after (spoiler) losing in an unwinnable situation. At the hour mark, after literally spending an entire hour of upgrading and improving, the boss will come over and K.O you, there's nothing you can do about it. It was extremely annoying since I thought I was ready to destroy it and continue exploring
After a bit of online searching I realized I was very close to the ending at my current state so I just went on another single run and finished the game. The ending, as I mentioned, was disappointing as it explains nothing of the game's world and is VERY anti-climactic.

This game really surprised me! The price is very good, especially when on sale. I like the progression in the game. When I first started, it felt so impossible to last past the first round, but each subsequent run I got better and better. I know that's pretty standard for rougelikes, but I appreciated it nonetheless.

I like the fact you can move your mech around as that adds another layer of strategy you can use during waves. There are a variety of upgrades and weapons (that you need to find) which keeps things fresh.

I played this mostly on the Steam Deck and it's been great for that. I do think there *might* be a memory leak somewhere because after playing a few sessions, the FPS really started to crawl. Restarting the game fixed it, though!

I think the weapon and mech switching controls were a bit cumbersome during combat on the Deck, but I just remapped those to the back buttons and fixed it up. Navigating the upgrade tree can be a bit tedious when you have a lot of stuff, but it's not that big of a deal. I'd suggest maybe a zoomed-out option for faster navigation where you can select icons that then expands into the upgrade trees.

Overall, great game and I look forward to playing it more.

Tower defense mining adventure, but it's vertical with immersive atmosphere.