Absolutely and unreservedly in love with this game, even in its Early Access state.
Its a roguelike, tower defense, RPG hybrid that just works effortlessly in combining all elements into a tense strategy game that has procedurally generated dungeons and heroes with unique abilities that encourages you to become attached to them, and then be desperate when the permadeath hits.
You have to carry your crashed shuttles power crystal through a maze of sci fi dungeon rooms. You only have the two heroes that crash landed. You open each airlocked door, with anticipation of what is beyond. As you deliberately carve a path through the maze to find the exit, you have to gather resources, industrial (to build things), biological (to heal and level up heroes), dust (dropped from the entrails of your enemy) to power up rooms with light and make the defences within functional. Dust is also the currency with which you can buy equipment/weapons from wandering merchants. So theres a balance between powering up a path, and getting new kit.
This intricate balance, means you have to be really careful which doors you open up, because from opened but darkened rooms come the snapping horde! In waves. Ultimately to see your heroes destroyed, but also to break the crystal and make the rooms dark again.
You command heroes, and tell them where to go, what to open. They auto-attack enemies in a room. You also build resource crystals on powered up rooms with appropriate crystal slots. Building a crystal costs industrial resources and gets increasingly more expensive. So first room has an industrial crystal, second room has a biocrystal, and so on. So that each open of a door, you net the resources pumped out by these structures. But with each open of the next door, comes the clawing enemy. They will destroy all crystals pumps if left to it. It's your job to place heroes, and defensive structures (turrets, mines, healing posts, extra damage posts) to prevent your demise.
As you carve this path through, you can turn power off to cul-de-sac in order to scrape together dust to buy kit, or to re-route power to another more resource lucrative track. But beware, darkened exposed rooms become sources of the creeping enemy. So make sure you have a heavily defended choke-point/killzone.
If damage to your defensive structures occurs some heroes have the ability to repair. Also, in combat you can spend bio crystals to heal heroes on the fly. However, this is also used to level up heroes (making them tougher) and also to buy new heroes you might meet stranded on the way. Always keep some bio spare to pickup new party members - you can have a max of four. Some are melee, some are ranged, some are healers, some are speedy, some are slow high hit points etc.
Lastly, once you have the exit in sight, use your resources and heroes to plot out a well protected lit path to the exit, then one of your heroes (I suggest a fast one) must uproot the original crystal and carry it to the exit, whilst under many waves of enemy clamouring to take your life and your crystal.
Absolutely thrilling stuff. Pixel art. Lovely lighting and effects. Only three levels of dungeon at present in the current early access, but its being crafted regularly with community feedback/votes etc. I've put many hours into it, and quite a bit of it isn't active yet (like crafting blueprints). It is a very playable game at the current state, and I can't wait to see what other complexities and excitement it has to offer during development.
Well worth the effort, I picked it up on the off chance for £7, but after playing my socks off, had to badger Steam into changing my purchase into the Founders edition for the extra fruits available later on. Only £12 for that.
I will be playing the fook out of this game for a long time coming methinks.
http://www.amplitude-studios.com/Articles/EARLY-ACCESS
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