Space Grunts Reviews

This game came recommended by a friend who may or may not know the developer. I am a big fan of roguelikes, especially stuff like Nethack...but im also into space games so this one really hit the nail on the head, as they say. Its a very easy quick game to dive into, with some interesting mysterious objects and encounters. At one point I found an object that opened up some sort of hole in the floor and it went to a cutscene between my char and some of the other npcs you can play. Really cool little touches like that are fun!

Since I am not seeing any indication on whether it is playable on Steam Deck. I just want to say I am playing this game on SD and I did not customize the control setting either.

I've really enjoyed this rougelike. Most of my playtime is on the Android version, but the Steam version (I played on Linux) is just as good. (I had a couple of issues with sound on 1.6.0, but that's all.) There's an extra element of resource management (with weapon ammunition at least) compared to what I'm used to with my limited rougelike experience, and it works pretty well; it encourages you to be consious about what you're using according to the situation. I have moments where I just run around blasting enemies, and moments where I have to stop and think my way out of a tight spot. It's pretty rewarding, and it keeps me coming back (even though I've yet to beat the game). If you're on the fence, maybe wait for a sale, but otherwise I think this is worth the $10 asking price.

Space Grunts is a rogue-like that plays a lot like Nuclear Throne, Dungeon Souls and Teleglitch except for one thing: Space Grunts is turn-based albeit fast paced. Check out my First Impressions and Space Grunt Gameplay here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0Brtr_GNXs

Pros: [list] [*] +1: Sounds and animations. Howling monsters and thundering explosions make the dungeon crawling feels like a rock show. [*] +1: Secrets and clues. Beware of special walls and containers. [*] +2: Unforgiving combat. It takes me 45 hours to beat the game for the first time. I really enjoys to solve in-game problems one after another. [/list] Cons: [*] -1: Annoying glitches. [list] [*] The mouse pointer moves to the center of the screen every time I start the game. I play the game by keyboard or X-Box controller, so I have to move the mouse pointer out of game window when running in window mode. [*] The fouth weapon slot cannot be remapped. [*] My X-box controller cannot be detected in full-screen mode sometimes. [*] There is only one save at a time. And every level can only be saved once. [/list] [*] -2: Low replayability. It takes me 48 hours to use all three characters to beat the game. After that, the game fails to make me stay longer. [/list] Simplified Chinese comment: 一周目很好玩！但是用三个玩家人物各自通关一遍之后，至少我不想继续玩了。 我写的[url=http://trow.cc/board/index.php?showtopic=28654]中文介绍[/url]。

DISCLAIMER: This game is a work in progress and I plan on spending more time with it. I will update this review as needed. Forgettable name aside, Space Grunts is actually a pretty interesting game. It plays like a hybrid of a turn based roguelike/roguelite with the pace of an arcade game. The gameplay itself is pretty simple. When you move or shoot, enemies can do the same. There's no skip turn button, so you need to think a bit about how you're going to position your marine to deal with enemies. The gameplay loop is that you spawn into a level and you move room to room clearing out baddies. You start with three weapons: A shotgun, a railgun, and a frag grenade. As you progress through the levels, you'll find more items that mix things up. It's simple and fun. If you're a fan of roguelikes/roguelites, give this a try. For $10, it's a good deal. Pros: - Easy to pick up. - Polished for an Early Access title. - Decent aesthetic and sounds. - Fast paced and fun gameplay. Cons: - Visually simple. - Not as deep or complex as the genres it draws from.

Love the idea of this game since it reminds me of DoomRL, one of my favorite roguelikes. Could this be its better-looking cousin? Unfortunately my initial impression wasn't very good: - I find controls awkward. Initially I thought you could move with the arrow keys and shoot with the mouse, but you have to use either one or the other. - When playing with keyboard you have to change your facing before moving in that direction. This has no gameplay purpose since turning on yourself is doesn't cout as a turn. This makes moving around artificially slow, I'd much prefer "twin-stick" style controls, think Binding of Isaac. It could work very well on a gamepad, on keyboard (two sets of directional keys, one to move one to shoot, or with the keyboard to move and the mouse to shoot, - Using the mouse is error-prone because clicking an enemy will shoot at it (if you have line of sight) or run towards it and your doom if you don't. Basically if you're a fast player like me or misinterpret the visual cues you're in big trouble. Clicking an enemy you can't shoot should do nothing. - Keyboard keys are rebindable - good - but the keyboard controls occasionally interprets me pressing the key once as two moves - very bad. WASD doesn't work by default and you can't use Enter to choose things in the main menu which gives the initial impression that keyboard doesn't fully work (two bindings for each commands would be nice). - You can't wait a turn to wait for enemies to move (a staple of turn-based roguelikes), so you're occasionally forced to move into enemy line of fire, which I really hate. - Initial 2-3 levels have very little challenge, I was getting seriously bored. - So far level design is completely linear with only one path to traverse the whole level, which means that if an explosion leaves some permanent toxic stuff on the floor you can be forced to walk through it, no alternate path for you. - Drop rate from crates is low but they occasionally give very good loot so you feel forced to burst them all. You spend a lot of ammo that way; there's a crowbar but it has limited uses and switching to the crowbar everytime to clean up a room is tedious. I think you should just be able to melee the crates for free. - You have to use all consumables from the inventory screen, being able assign a few into quickslots with their own keys would've made the gameplay more fluid. - Cheap deaths (in a permadeath game!): some enemies don't follow the same rules as you and can fire at you directly and through obstacles while you have to shoot in straight lines. Also, when you open doors enemies can sometimes get a first shot at you. In both cases if you're low on health you're doomed to die without being able to do anything about it, a big design sin for a roguelike. - Explosions graphics are cool but they don't accurately convey the squares that were affected, and for explosive enemies you can't quite see if you were damaged by the explosion. - Enemies seem to vary in health (your damage with weapons is constant) which makes the tactical game of positioning with the enemies unreliable, i.e. you can't plan out how much damage you'll receive by tackling a specific enemy. I think enemies should have fixed health (but you can have different colored ones for variations of the same enemy). Still there are some things I liked: - Thank gods, it avoided the balance-breaking mistake of having power/health upgrades that stick between runs - Nice pixel art, very well animated with nice explosions - Explosive barrels (muhahahaha!!!) and destructible walls - Only three weapons (so far at least) but they each have their purpose, and you have to carefully choose which one to use, and conserve your ammo. - You can select weapons with number keys. - Getting weapon upgrades doesn't happen too often but is very satisfying because you can really feel the difference visually and in terms of damage. Other upgrades (inventory, skills) are even rarer but I think it's well-dosed. - Secret rooms - Some explosions don't expand in a single turn, so you can run away from them, pretty cool - Some interesting inventory items, mostly consumables but some with permanent effect - Traps can be used against enemies Overall some good elements, but some very annoying flaws and some bad design points. I didn't find the overall gameplay as exciting as in DoomRL, in particular due to a lack of early challenge and controls I dislike. I'm on the edge on whether I should recommend it or not, but I'm going with negative since I won't be coming back to it. Let's see what can of improvements can be brought to the game during early access...

A fun roguelike game, I find it rather hard. The preview pictures gave me an impression of a rush game, but you got to play rather carefully and lure enemies in favorable positions. You can use props and environment to your advantage, and there is a reasonable number of item drops and upgrades to help you going. The music is pretty bearable and not at all what you would expect with such graphics. It is rather shallow but that is to be expected and though the graphics are meant this way, they could be a tad more advanced. Still I found this rather entertaining so far (5 hours), fresh and soothing in it's simplicity. Great if you have little time, are tired, and want mindless fun.

Yeah, its true, this is essentially a turn-based version of [i]Nuclear Throne[/i].[b] But wait, before you dismiss it, understand that it is [i]really[/i] well done, and definately has earned its place in competing with [i]NT[/i].[/b] While I [i]love Nuclear Throne[/i], this title may actually get more of my time because IMhumbleO anytime you add turn-based mechanics, things get better. [i]I said I would only boot it up to check it out, but four hours flew by - that rarely happens to me.[/i] [b]Dissertation work was put on hold for this mother******.[/b] [b]Pros:[/b] +Butter smooth gameplay with either a mouse/keyboard or from the couch with a controller. You can play as fast or slow as you want. +Artwork is pretty great +Utterly addictive one-more-run kind of coffee-break game here. +Unlockables such as a bestiary and new playable characters that have different stats (not just skins). +Daily runs. +Learning curve is not as steep as many other roguelikes. +No cheap deaths. [b]Cons:[/b] -Probaby best in 1-2 hour play sessions maximum (like any coffee break game). [b]Totally worth full price IMO.[/b] I will get a lot of mileage out of this, plus there is more to come a la Early Access.

I absolutely recommend this game to other players, I'm not even a big fan of rogue-likes, but after seeing the game-play trailer for this, I had to try it. So I've played 74 frustratingly fun minutes! I guess this is my early, early access review. I love the difficulty level, the balance is spot on. The randomly generated levels work perfectly, it's nice to see different layouts each time I play and the area sizes feel just right. Not too big or small. The turn based game-play adds even more value for me, I love being able to plan. It's so much better than just running around in a big mess of explosions and bullets like a lot of traditional rogue-likes. The variety of weapon upgrades, items, power ups and enemies that I've encountered are interesting and the addition of data cards makes it all that more interesting. My personal favourite item so far is the mine, I enjoy pacing about at distance and letting the enemy come to me, only to walk straight into my mine! The data cards seem to be rare, unless I've just been really unlucky. But this is the way it should stay I think, if they drop too often, it would feel like less of a reward when players find them. The pixel art is nice and bold, the music works for the settings, creates some nice atmosphere, coupled with really nice weapon sound effects. It's not very often that a rogue-like pulls me away from my work, which happens to be making games too. So from one developer to another, you've done an excellent job with the balance in Space Grunts. I'm looking forward to playing more! Keep up the solid work!