Having played this game for four hours now, and having beaten the two available stages (at least I think these are the only two available stages? there is a third locked door to the forge but I couldn't open it even after beating the second boss), I can't really say that I am impressed.

There's a very low amount of available basic attacks (one frost, one fire, one shadow, and one lightning) and spells (I think six in total? the fact I played four hours of this game and can't even remember how many there are says a lot about how much they impressed me). you can choose to upgrade both your basic attacks and your spells, but since spells have a cooldown and honestly don't do all that much, I found myself constantly just upgrading my basic attacks instead. the basic attack upgrades themselves are also incredibly basic : More projectiles, more damage, longer range, shorter cooldown, and piercing are the main upgrades. There is also one upgrade that gives projectile amount and "magic power". what magic power is, I can honestly not tell you. the game doesn't try to explain it, and it isn't damage, because that is a separate stat...

The unlockable relics/arcane mutators that you can get as a level-up choice are also very underwhelming. On my winning run on the second stage I used a lightning staff, and "lucked out" and got a relic that "increased my lightning damage by five percent for every lightning". See, relics seemingly have some elemental orbs attached to them, and this relic had two lightning orbs, meaning my damage was increased by a mighty ten percent in total. My lightning wand shot up in damage from... 10 damage to 11 damage. I didn't get another relic that gave lightning orbs for the entire rest of the run. later I got a random basic attack upgrade that added 3 damage to my attacks, increasing my damage by a lot more than this arcane mutator I paid to unlock, as well as having a secondary effect on top.

The game is very basic. you run around the map, and you can find mineral outposts to beat up to get some of the meta-currency to buy the mutators that can drop in the game, as well as new basic attacks to choose at the start. monsters spawn around you, and move slowly towards you. a bit into the game, the monsters change, and now have more health as they move slowly towards you. The designs in and of themselves are nice though, and the pixelart is solid. there are also piles of gold that lets you reroll level-up choices, and potions that reset your spell cooldowns and increase the dragon bar. When you fill the dragon bar, you can mount your dragon which... increases your attack speed and movement speed? and I think it might make you immune to damage from smaller mobs? I legitimately can't tell you. This lasts for a bit, and then you promptly dismount. The potions spawn over the place, so you can be on the dragon pretty often.

Twice during each map, a reaper-looking fella will spawn. This is a miniboss that moves towards you and sometimes charges you. if you get hit by this guy, he steals one of your three heart containers, permanently lowering your max health. your reward if you kill him before he despawns is.. a single piece of meta-currency and some gold, seemingly? the risk-reward of it seems a bit skewed.

The bosses that spawn at the end are hard, mostly because they are seemingly the only monsters capable of launching projectiles at you. The second boss in particular launches tons of projectiles aimed at you at high speeds. However, he seemingly bugged out after a while into the fight, and just stood there and let me kill him.

In the announcements for this game, there is mention of a second class. I did not find a way to unlock it, not any hints as to how to do so if it is indeed available. There is a dragon egg you can buy that probably gives you a second dragon, but it took a meta-currency that I only got as an achievement reward, and I am not about to grind achievements for that to find out what the second one does. There are also some meta-currencies I got for achievement rewards (spellberries?) that I did not find any use for? you seemingly only use the blue ore-looking things and the eyes to unlock items currently, so no idea what those are for.

I am going to be honest, about halfway through, I tabbed out to make sure I hadn't managed to download the demo for the game. It feels really barebones, and that comes from someone who has played a lot of the survivor-like games on the cheaper side. All in all you can probably find worse things to spend five bucks on, but you can also find much better things.

I might check this game out more with updates, but for now, I am feeling pretty done with it.

What's described here on the store page is just not the degree of content that is in the game. There's hardly any variety. These items that exist you pick once and that's it. Then it's the same cycle of upgrades over and over again. There's basically no decision since almost every upgrade is a DPS increase. I did something to the effect of 4 runs - 2 wins and 2 losses. My builds felt the exact same both runs except that I chose a different main weapon which changed mostly just how things looked. Yeah, there's like 4 or 5 abilities for your Q-E-R keys, but

The actual progress of the gameplay loop doesn't feel different enough, either. The scaling of enemies is so minimal that your scaling is also minimal. Maybe if you compare only the beginning to the very endpoint is there a major difference. Otherwise, you just watch a number go from like 12 to 20 by the end of the run. I'm not saying it needs to go to 10,000,000. But it would be nice to see a lot more meaningful scaling.

There's also some sort of sigil system - the one I remember best was a bonus of 5% to lightning damage for each lightning sigil, and this item gave 2 sigils. Ok, 10% bonus is cool, but I don't think I ever saw these sigils again after that upgrade.

I know it's early access, but it feels like alpha access, honestly. I'm disappointed about how much customization was mentioned on the store page just to find out there is basically none. Also, the dragon is so incredibly useless. Yeah, it lets you fly above enemies and make a quick getaway - but for being such a pivotal point of the game, it doesn't do anything. You just collect and use potions for like, 5 seconds. And then you collect the potions for another 5 seconds.

It's just way too shallow - to the point I requested a refund.
Maybe when this game comes out of EA it will have a much better slew of content, but for now, it's incredibly barren, boring, and bland.

I will say though, the soundtrack and sound effects are pretty solid. The dev truly nailed that aspect!

Fresh twist on survivors genre that left me satisfied.

I played over 20 survivors games at this point and this falls in my top 5 favorites. Amount of weapons, hats ,dragons, enemies and bosses left me smiling and wanting to unlock more. Each playthough felt unique. One think is didn't like first couple minutes of a run felt dull. But after couple minutes once enemy waves starts increasing then its okay. Bosses felt hard enough but not too hard for me. Overall decently balanced! Good job dev!