DEFRAG Reviews

Well crafted incremental game. You actually feel the immediate impact of your upgrades, not all incremental games (or other "numbers go up" game such as ARPGS) manage to do this that well.

As a fan of incremental games, this one ticked all the right boxes. It was a ton of fun to play.

Took me about 7h to 100% the game. I did have to look up a walkthrough for the final achievement - aside from that, everything was excellent. Really good sense of progression throughout.

An accurate fairy tale visual representation of the trials and tribulations of a system administrator in the 80s, or so I've been told. Nice pacing, didn't overstay its welcome. The load out approach was a nice break from the regular stacking every weapon until screen is covered with projectiles.

Really cool short game with nice visuals and good progression curve. Can recommend !

(ignore my time played - I reached 100% around 5 hours but left the game running by accident) Interesting incremental bullet hell game, although the difficulty is definitely on the casual end of things as you can become essentially unstoppable through the meta progression so you don't need lightning reflexes to get through DEFRAG (but they will help you beat multiple stages in a row before buying more upgrades). I played using mouse and keyboard, but the control experience was quite frustrating because the mouse wheel always zooms the main node tree in and out, even if you are also scrolling through the list of [spoiler] modules[/spoiler]. Also, even if you're using the arrows keys or WASD to move your little cube during the bullet hell levels, at the beginning of play it will always move towards your mouse cursor until you hit a key. It's little things like this that suggest to me that the developer could have used a bit more testing or watching people play the game in "real conditions". There's a flirtation with buildcrafting later in the game which is really cool on paper, but the interface to switch out "gear" is awful: there's even multiple loadouts available but items aren't unequipped from 1 when you switch to 2 (and so on), so if you want any of the same items equipped in two loadouts you'd need many multiples??). Just feels half-baked. The progression is pretty well-balanced - I don't think I ever had to attempt a stage more than two or three times and many of them I beat on the first attempt. One positive thing is that just when you feel like the unlock tree is getting a bit grindy, you'll beat a stage and a new meta mechanic will unlock. This happens a few times during the game and is very welcome - if I could tweak one thing it would probably be to unlock these things one stage earlier just to keep the progression from feeling too repetitive. Nice music, sound effects and there are some neat retro visual effects that anyone who played PC games in the 80s or 90s will appreciate, especially as you get towards the endgame. I'll add here that the game is currently rated PLAYABLE on Steam Deck and this is correct - you should play this game on a PC if possible. The text resolution makes it pretty unreadable on the Deck screen, and overall controller support feels good in the bullet hell levels but very bad in the meta layer. I want to stress that if you are looking for a casual bullet hell experience with the twist of an incremental meta layer and great visuals and sound, then you could do a lot worse than DEFRAG. I recommend it and enjoyed it a lot: I just think that with a few QoL tweaks this would be a game I'd be gifting to friends rather than just leaving a positive review.

The game is fine, but the visuals (especially end game) are very harsh on the eyes

Oh this game was very good. I keep looking for Nodebuster-like games, and this one hit the spot in a very very satisfying and good way. Huge recommend for incremental enthusiasts! 10/10

For the price, not even on sale, this game is an insane steal. I'm fairly close to the end and it just hits that dopamine spot in your brain, that feels so incredible about Incremental/Bullet Heaven games. If this game ever gets an expansion or a sequel, you better believe I am going to be there! It does really need an option for turning [i]some[/i] effects off. Like the explosion weapon.

For sure worth it's price. - Beginning to end has somewhat kind of smooth progression - The ending though feels very empty, but it's decent - Gameplay & Visuals are good enough Rating: 6.8 / 10 If you want a game that's like a mixture of nodebuster and a little bit of bytepath sprinkled on top then this is the game for you.