Asterogues Reviews

Strongly recommend this game for anyone who likes roguelikes and bullet hell games, it's very fun. Each character has an entirely unique way of playing that makes the whole game feel different. Items feel relatively unique and are very streamlined. However the game definitely lacks polish, which isn't too bad considering how new it is. My biggest personal issue is the sheer lack of visual clarity, I generally get hit either because I can't differentiate my bullets from the enemies or they just blend into the environment or the constant flashy effects your character makes. Another big one is getting dropped directly on an enemy entering a stage so you immediately take damage, it's not constant but it happens enough that it feels pretty unfair. Bosses seem to attack behind text boxes as well. It's a really unique breath of fresh air but I can definitely see these problems wearing me down, might have to wait for an update or two but definitely recommend at least keeping an eye on it.

I'm not sure why this game is Deck Verified, because that's certainly not my experience. Some of the screen is cut off with no apparent way to adjust the resolution, there are issues with a cursor being both on-screen and immobile, and some of the settings (e.g. fullscreen/window swap) are completely inaccessible. Technical issues aside, the game is cute, but I wasn't really wowed by the gameplay. There's an interesting "bullet catching" mechanic where you can return enemy fire to them, but I didn't find it fun enough to be the entire basis of the game's combat. Additionally, because of how this function is bound to the trigger, it creates a really awkward default control scheme, which is kind of annoying to rebind because of bad menu UI. I also have other aesthetic nitpicks, like the use of both pixelated and vector font, which make the game feel non-cohesive to me. Unfortunately, I'm going to refund Asterogues. It's cool to see a small dev launch their game, and there are some neat ideas here and there. But, with nothing that really grabbed me in terms of gameplay, the technical issues and lack of polish turn me off. I would give this game another chance in 6-12 months if it saw continuous improvements, but, for now, it's a thumbs-down from me.