20 Minutes Till Dawn - Thoughts

[This is an Early Access Review, July 2022]

Despite the low price point, I was never compelled to pick up Vampire Survivors. From its silly, totally-not-Castlevania art style to its annoyingly long lootbox animation, I never felt like I was missing out on anything special. The player characters were as slow as molasses, enemy mobs behaved too similarly, and thirty minutes just seemed a bit too long for such basic gameplay. Of course the game has evolved plenty since release—a cursory search on youtube will reveal a kaleidoscope of psychedelic colors and yellow numbers—but Vampire Survivors always felt like it was missing something to me...

... something like a gun.

Well that's not totally true—20 Minutes Till Dawn also looks tremendously better than its spiritual predecessor. The 4-bit aesthetic is sleek as hell, using salmon pink (of all colors!) to wisely convey danger. That small touch allows players to read the battlefield, even amidst a violent storm of chaos. Rest assured, 20 Minutes Till Dawn will always get hectic, especially when you're new and unaccustomed to the visual effects of your numerous upgrades. But as long as you've developed an eye for shmupping, the game never gets too noisy—well, just make sure you avoid taking the Splinter upgrade with the grenade launcher (a mistake you definitely won't repeat again).

Speaking of upgrades, 20 Minutes Till Dawn offers a buffet of useful abilities, each of them important to at least one viable build. Of course you'll quickly latch onto some obvious favorites (I take Run & Gun, Kill Clip, and Frost Mage on nearly every run) while others may only find themselves considered in the most niche or desperate scenarios (Focal Point, Watch & Learn, Giant, and the entire Ghost Friend tree). But unless you're playing with the same character and weapon every time, you'll inevitably come across a tough decision to agonize over—especially since one wrong upgrade could cost you the entire run on harder difficulties.

More and more, I'm becoming convinced that granular difficulties à la Slay the Spire are the best fit for roguelites. Not only do they acclimate you to the game's changes one minutae at a time, but they naturally encourage multiple runs, ensuring you can't stumble your way into a lucky victory on "hard" and call it a day. 20 Minutes Till Dawn starts off fairly easy but really ratchets up the intensity, especially when standard enemies are given a minor speed boost. Darkness 15—the (current) final difficulty—forces you to experiment with different runes and upgrade pathways, which can be frustrating when you're missing that one powerup you really need, but invigorating once it all finally comes together. It's a good blend of RNG and skill, though some characters/gun combos will be notably easier to win with than others.

If there's something to criticize about 20 Minutes Till Dawn (besides elemental builds being the best and summon builds the worst), it's that each run always has the same peaks and valleys. Specifically, the second and fourth bosses will be your biggest obstacles, both of them a tense encounter that can drop your health in the blink of an eye. It's a cool challenge you have to consciously spec for... but nearly every other boss is a simpleton in comparison. In fact, the final three minutes are more or less a victory lap; if you can survive being caged in with the spinning laser blob, then there really isn't anything that can stop you outside of closing your eyes and letting go of your controller. Hell, in some rare cases you might win anyway (ah, the beauty of triple Glare)! It's just a shame that over the course of a twenty minute non-stop brawl, there's only a few memorable bits—and they're the same ones every run.

20 Minutes Till Dawn is a great game that offers considerable bang for your buck. It requires a decent blend of deft dodging and smart upgrading, promising a fireworks-like spectacle if you make it to the end. No doubt the game can be vexing when you aren't offered a pivotal powerup—speed upgrades are essential for Darkness 15—but it's thrilling to know that success isn't always a guarantee (again, at least on Darkness 15). While I look forward to seeing how 20 Minutes Till Dawn develops, I've probably had my fill for now, content to leave its banquet of bullets with my stomach stuffed and satisfied.

(Oh, and avoid Endless Mode—at least for now. It's a repetitive snoozefest that lasts over two hours, which is waaaaaaay too long for a game this bite-sized.)

The Room - Thoughts

When I started The Room, I didn't expect there to be quite so much... clicking. A cursory glance suggested perplexing riddles or logic puzzles, but the entire experience is leagues simpler than that: The Room is a linear series of fidget cubes. Well, elaborate fidget cubes—which at least require some semblance of logic to puzzle out. For those tickled by antique wooden boxes hiding a plethora of compartments, The Room is a cool game... but venture into it understanding that it values a curious mind more than a sharp one.

About an hour in, I understood why the series is buzzing with positive reviews—there's not really anything like it out there. Sure, you get an occasional puzzle box in Resident Evil and Uncharted, but a whole game based off pulling out miniature drawers to discover bizarre keys? That's an untapped (digital) market! And thankfully, Fireproof Games knows how to design a game around prodding and poking an ornate box full of secrets...

... for the most part.

In order to investigate a particular section of the puzzle box, you first have to zoom in by double clicking nearby. But you can't zoom in anywhere you want; sections are delineated, forcing you to click around frantically to see what is and isn't interactable. Sometimes you'll zoom in on completely innocuous bits that don't have a use (yet) and other times the camera will send you right beside the thing you actually want to investigate. And since clicking can also manipulate objects, you'll be frequently mashing your mouse pointer against anything and everything, in the hopes of uncovering a secret pressure plate or hidden dial. It never gets as bad as pixel hunting in adventure games, but trying to find every interactable object does evoke a similar confusion—if not frustration.

This isn't a minor inconvenience either, as aimless clicking composes most of The Room's playtime. But if you can put up with it, there are some cool animations and nifty perspective puzzles to behold, along with some really gorgeous puzzle boxes. Seriously, if any screenshots from The Room capture your interest, it's worth the price of entry just to explore each chapter's convoluted wooden contraption. There is an undeniable delight in watching a latch or spindle slide away to reveal a new piece of the puzzle, all while staying (mostly) consistent with the internal dimensions of each box. The way hinges creak and gears click is impeccable too—if there's something Fireproof Games got right, it's making the boxes the star of the show.

The last gripe I have with The Room is that it's ultimately... directionless. When you start the game, both the setting and narrative seem to indicate you're on the verge of discovering something far beyond your imagination. And while I liked the occult flavoring, the experience doesn't really lead anywhere conclusive—at least for the first entry in the franchise. There's some cool art and non-Euclidean trickery in the latter half, but at no point does it feel like you're building to the final puzzle or an unspeakable treasure. In fact, you don't really fulfill your main objective at all; the game kind of just ends and goes "hope you're ready for more some day!"

You can blast through The Room in a handful afternoons, and that's honestly the perfect length of time for the game. There are some neat bits and bobs here but nothing that will really stick with you once the experience is over, besides a feeling of "I guess that was cool." Yet conversely, you won't ever get stuck in it for too long, as you know the path forward has to be located somewhere on the exterior of the object before you. While I would've liked more meat to the game (1/3rd of the puzzles have you making the same shape over and over), I'm glad The Room exists for puzzle box enthusiasts—and I'm curious how the series expands from here.

Neon Abyss - Thoughts

[contains minor spoilers]

Three runs deep, I had a troubling realization: Neon Abyss wasn't winning me over. There are other roguelites I dropped faster than it (Legend of Dungeon, Sublevel Zero), but I wasn't itching to plumb its depths the same way I had with Spelunky, Dead Cells, or Crypt of the Necrodancer. On one hand it's unfair to compare it to the genre's greatest, but on the other hand Neon Abyss has the chops to contend with the best: it's smooth, flashy, meaty, and has a sardonic charm that helps it stand out. But even after besting its managers (both regular and cursed), I still find it... lacking in a lot of ways. Succinctly put: Neon Abyss is a fun game, but I don't think it's a good game.

Or perhaps I should specify that it's not a good roguelite, as my issues mainly stem from Neon Abyss's poor balance run to run. As a game it can be quite captivating, handing you quirky weapon and item combinations that will bathe your monitor in bouncing lasers and cascading explosions. If there's something you can expect from Neon Abyss, it's bang for your buck: there's a staggering amount of enemies, items, characters, oddities, and unlockables here, ensuring there's something new to contend with each run. Despite my playtime clocking in at over twenty hours, I've only laid eyes on 75% of the power-ups available—and what I've currently seen is more than enough to check a box labeled "variety" multiple times over.

But the byproduct of having a mountainous heap of options is that a certain portion of it is destined to be junk. And the garbage isn't on the periphery either: there's a myriad of common power-ups that range from mediocre to detrimental. Even items that could be useful under certain conditions (like spite-producing power-ups) are all but useless unless you can proc them consistently (so pray Animosity falls into your lap). I think a big part of the issue is that while certain guns or items are fine to run into, the really good ones (Lipstick, Forbidden Mask, Most Wanted List, Howard Reactor, Divinity) are so invaluable that it's frustrating when you're deprived of them, instead offered rubbish like Matchbox and Black Rum. The worst is the entire subset of melee power-ups—melee is a risky, impractical, and sloppy alternative to simply shooting your problems away from across the room. I mean come on, a huge amount of enemies and bosses are airborne!

Weapons sadly fall prey to this disparity too, although you'll have a better chance of encountering at least one decent one in a shop. Unfortunately, your starting weapon will always suck with no exceptions—which makes finding a new firearm a top priority. Gun upgrades can help transform an anemic firearm into a capable one, but some weapons (Phantom, Thunder, Noise, Deathray, New Type) will always stink compared to their kin. Meanwhile armaments like Famine, Animosity, and Vortex are so devastating that you can stand still and decimate encounters—including some of the toughest boss battles! 

Anyone that's played The Binding of Isaac knows that imbalance is sown into the roguelite turf, but player skill usually helps buffer that annoyance. Namely, that Isaac (and Gungeon and dozens of others) are played as a twin-stick shooter, where good positioning and sharp reflexes can counterbalance some of the worst loot drops. But Neon Abyss is more in line with a run'n'gun, cutting the second dimension out of your movement. This makes it notably harder to dodge enemy attacks, especially when they warp in right above you like in arenas. And there's no floaty ScourgeBringer physics or Dead Cells dodge mechanic to assist in avoiding attacks either—the best way to dodge is to kill your enemy ASAP, or pray you find a rare flight-granting item (which then trivializes the rest of the game!)

You'll learn quickly that there are very few comfortable middle grounds in Neon Abyss—victory will either come easily or feel impossible. Nothing embodies this better than the arena fights, a trio of tight encounters you're encouraged to beat without taking damage. Victory will reward you with a much-needed gun upgrade—but if you've brushed against a single bullet, you'll receive a consolatory bomb/key/nickel instead. Fights don't really scale past the second level either, meaning that if you can best your first few arenas you'll basically snowball your way to victory. Yet on occasion you'll encounter an arena where you simply need to dodge a predictable laser, a task so straightforward that your weapon upgrade is guaranteed upon entry.

And stuff like that is pricks me about Neon Abyss: it leans into randomness too hard. Sure, thematically the game gels with chaos like chocolate does with marshmallow, but so much of the game is RNG stacked atop RNG. There are so many sources of randomness: shops, eggs, crates, chests, bricks, arcade rooms, Smirk counters, roulette machines, roulette doors, roulette boxes, roulette rooms, roulette stages... hell, even the gun upgrades that drop from bosses will randomly cycle between 1-3 random powerups! I know RNG is the lifeblood of roguelites, but Neon Abyss fixates on gambling to the point that it stacks random rewards inside of its random rewards, like a self-propagating matryoshka doll. Anyone that's gone through a room full of chests, tried fishing, or suffered through a clown room will know exactly what I'm talking about.

I know I've been relentlessly trashing on Neon Abyss, so let me at least clarify that there are definitely some cool things about it. One of the most appreciable touches is how much the player can customize their experience; beyond difficulty and character selection, you can choose from a handful of items to start with and remove upgrades, items, and even enemies you don't like! Plus the power trip Neon Abyss sends you on can be as fulfilling as it is ludicrous, with entire rooms melting under your gigantic, wall-piercing quintuple laser. And considering how there's two items per treasure room, wisdom & violence rewards, and a shop on every floor, it's pretty hard not to cobble together a winning build (at least on Normal.) The game is fairly laid-back once you get used to its eccentricities.

The problem, however, is that even with these eccentricities accounted for, Neon Abyss continues to feels unbelievably sloppy. Every run devolves into a landslide of visual chaos, making it impossible to tell where attacks are coming from or what's happening most of the time. Endgame fights like Hal, Zeus, and Athena are a collage of colors that will not only obscure incoming attacks but are guaranteed to obliterate most of your pets (RIP pet builds.) Yet what's weird is you don't really need to know what's happening either; should a Basketball Jersey, The Towel, or a decent weapon be in your possession, you can tank those bosses like nobody's business. It was only on my fourth Prometheus kill that I finally understood what the hell was happening during phase 2!

What really put the nail in the coffin for me and Neon Abyss were the damn wisdom chests. To reach the true final boss, you have to traverse either the path of wisdom or violence—which just means opening up a bunch of their respective chests. But a major problem is that wisdom chests that take damage turn into violence chest—and not the other way around. So on more than one occasion I failed to reach Cursed Athena due to a wisdom chest taking unavoidable damage from an enemy on the other side of the room, with no way to prevent it! Hard mode bafflingly compounds this issue too, occasionally making it impossible to reach Cursed Athena/Ares due to not enough chests spawning. Why? Why allow me to make it so far through the game just to shrug and go, "Oops, try again!"

In some ways, one can argue that Neon Abyss succeeds with flying colors—brilliant, blinding, and absurd flying colors. But for me it's just too sloppy, noisy, and undignified to warrant returning to. Team 17 feels more concerned with content than balance, addicted to designing new roulette wheels for the player to waste their time on. Again, I can't deny that I already played a ton of the game and had a lot of fun doing so, but boy howdy was I wrong in assuring myself that its peculiarities would become palatable if only I stuck with it.

At the end of the day, perhaps it's just a difference of opinion. Whereas Enter the Gungeon sought to make Binding of Isaac more serious, Neon Abyss zips off in the opposite direction at full speed. Neither is the "right" or "wrong" approach—I just find Gungeon to have more of a substantive and balanced game to it compared to Abyss. If a zanier, less coherent Binding of Isaac sounds like your jam, then Neon Abyss might be right down your alley. Just be wary that the flashing lights of this neon alley might be all there is to it.