UTOPIA 9 - A Volatile Vacation Reviews

A small game at a small price that was fun for a few hours. Nothing jawbreaking but decent gunfights and weapons. Speedrunning the game was amusing. 6/10

I wish I could recommend this, I really do, but I cannot. While a fun game it's extremely unforgiving - even for a roguelite, with basically no way to recover from even slight mistakes and, the nail in its coffin, extremely ardous to restart and with a progression based solely upon layers upon layers upon LAYERS of barely controllable RNG. Offered the wrong mutations? Shit outta luck. Don't get the good guns? Shit outta luckl. Combine this with ZERO progression (whoop de doo you unlock a different starting class if you finish the damn game) and, again, total random progression, and it ends up a game where dying for the nth time due to bad luck coupled with just one or two mistakes just frustrates you to no end. Cannot reccomend.

Definately one of those smaller scale fun indie games, I don't see this game as becoming a big blockbuster, but I do see it as a passion project and being enjoyable for what it is, which in my opinion, is quick, mindless fun with just enough replay value and interesting elements to keep you invested Let me break things down with what makes this game (Will call it Utopia 9 for short just to make things easier) an interesting and quite funny game, as it does do some things that are expected/have been done before, but first up it doesn't do those things badly, and secondly, where the game does do different/new things are a tad weird, but in a good/inovative way Let me just start by explaining the game itself Utopia 9 is a rogue like twin stick shooter with a cartoony/almost Boarderlands-esque art style where you play as a human in the futue that's getting their vacation ruined by these weird freaky aliens, and you have to stop them with everything from literally your luggage breifcase as a melee weapon to the standard shotguns and smgs to crazy stuff like a chain taser or a shrapnel firing one handed shotgun. On top of that you basically buy gooey/splatoon esque (every powerup you pick at the beggining of the run leaves a pile of goo) drugs/enhancements that can give you bonus abilites/perks at the beggining of a run As you can plainly see, this game just yells parody and passion project (which isn't a bad thing at all) to me, its silly elements and not being a serious game at all, with a more alien focus, kinda feels like a mash up of Zombies Ate My Neighbors, with the whole alien elements of Destroy All Humans (obviously, your the human here tho) Now all these elements are fun, fine and dandy and are executed well. But what stuck out to me/what makes the game interesting and have a tad of its own "spices" if you will, is the following elements Path-Picking-The game allows you to pick a route to go down every time you complete an area, but there's a bit of thinking as well as risks. One area may have explosives in the area and you can go down that route if you want to upgrade your "toys" or another rotue may have a focus on health pickups, but each of these routes may come with problems like melee focused enemies one route, and long range enemies the other route, so not only do you have to pick out which route based on risk, but also based on what you think you might need Secondly is the way that dying in this game can affect your next run, and lets just say virtual vendettas are a thing for Utopia 9. Why? Let me explain When you die, an alien nearby picks up all your stuff and also quite literally gets "roided up" and while you may obviously want revenge to go after your old stuff, it also won't be easy and can potentially compromise your run if you get tunnel vision, not to mention that your previous incarnations can "haunt" you during future runs and you may run into the 9th or 12th character you used. In short, you have to wonder if it's best to try and get your stuff back/get revenge, or keep away from these encounters and see how far you can go This, is what makes Utopia 9 a weird game, but a good kind of werid, and I can definately reccomend this game, but I also see this game as potentially not being everyone's cup of tea with it's different approaches/executions to things, just be sure to keep these things in mind while browsing/reading about or considering buying the game

*Fazla kişinin keşfetmemiş olduğu Action-Roguelike türünün keyifli oyunlarından. *Single Player oynayış gayet keyifli. hatta güzel bir özelliği var !!!Öldüğünüz noktadaki düşman sizin silahlarınızla gelişmiş bir mutant'a dönüşüyor.Yani ölürken elinizde iyi bir silah varsa farklı sonuclar oluşuyor:)Roguelike olduğuna göre oradan geçerken bikaç tık zorlaşma oluyor. *F/P olarak indirimli yada indirimsiz olarak da alınabilir. *Oyun yapay zekası bu ücrette bir oyuna için gayet güzel. (2016 model oyun olduğunu unutmayalım) *Action RogueLike türünde farklı oyunlar arayışındaysanız değerlendirin.İyi oyunlar

If you enjoy Gungeon, Nuclear Throne, or Binding of Isaac this hits many of the same bulletpoints but adds "Couch Co-op Friendly" to the mix, along with a unique inventory, and a mutation system that allows you to do downright stupid builds. Control is smooth on both keyboard and gamepad, Weapons feel impactful and different, the ragdolling corpses ond debris add to the chaos as your wrench sends a foe skipping across the road splatting bits of him as he slams off of walls and dumpsters. A well placed grenade sends a gaggle of enemies haplessly twirling through the air showering drops soylent and gore. Its got a kitschy retro-futurist vibe going for it too which adds a further layer of absurdity to the action. The weapon variety is strong, with even two weapons of the same class being totally different. A 4-slot weapon inventory system makes loadouts particularly interesting as you can dual wield any two 1-slot single handed weapons or just lug around 2 2-slot heavy weapons. Painting the alleyways and streets with twin powerfists is pretty hilarious, then again so is dropping a wall of lead with a flak pistol and doublebarreled revolver. You also have slots for different types of wearable armor and an active item slot for various thowable weapons. The item pool is just big enough for particular goodies to be rare, while small enough that nothing is chaff. Mutations and Creams mix it up further and allow you to "build" a run and pursue synergies rather than reactively coping with whatever comes along. Like Nuclear throne, you are given three choices each level up, allowing you to add effects to weapon classes, gain passive/active abilities, or cause new kinds of stuff to drop. Creams are buffs you choose at the outset of runs to slant your hapless vacationeer into certain playstyles, each coming with a powerful buff, but also one or two fairly serious backdraws right out of the gate. Co-op tends to be where other watershed games of this type typically end up wanting, here it's a primary focus. The action while frantic,is much easier to read than its contemporaries, pickups are shared, chests give off more loot per player and it's fairly hard to lose track of your character amid all the explosions particles and gore.

Nice game. I enjoyed this more than Forced Showdown and Enter the Gungeon. Not sure why, but it controls well and I like the mechanic where the enemy that kills you gets your old weapons and becomes a boss enemy. Give it a try for yourself, it's inexpensive and worth a play.

This initially started at the bottom of my twin-stick 'to-get' list. Factors were a poor impression gotten from a more-narrative-than-informative trailer that seemed more interested in showing off a rather half-assed mixed media motion-comic than its gameplay, and vague 'samey' screenshots that seem to sell the vistas more than the main course. It had even put me off looking for lets play videos as a result. Talk about false advertising.... So I finally got round to this little fucking gem which I now consider my favourite twin-stick dual-wieldable experience I've had since hotline miami. And even then I love it alot more in many ways. So it might just be my absolute favourite twin-stick experience EVER. Makes me regret even wasting my time with the 4-5 other more popular titles. Mainly due to the following aspects: PROS: 1)The GUNPLAY PACING. UNGGGHH. SO FUCKING REFRESHING. Initial firefight on the landing (scrapyard) zone had my eyebrow raised throughout, uncertain if I was playing in a artificially slowed, slowmo ballet mode. By the time I had to switch hands to blind-fire from behind the benches at the welcome area while using my briefcase to shove the bench against the melee goons I. WAS. SOLD. 2)The tactical pacing! Yes, the players projectiles fire at a faster(normal?) velocity while the enemies seem to suffer a slowdown in theirs for the most part, and in typical arcadey fashion, all their attacks have some sort of wind-up sequence that adds to this intoxicating blend of almost too cheese and easy to predict vs. 'once you get too cocky/adventurous with the gunkata and unsuccessfully failing hard at john wicking due to a microsecond reaction delay, a handful of unforseen tactical parameters changing, and a face full of FAST shotgun pellets you'd find yourself falling onto the landing site once more in your sorry excuse for a tourist transport pod.' 2)Animations are simple, sometimes lazy, definitely clever. Always satisfying. Details like shields getting torn apart and caps getting shot off and faceplates shattering, to the barrels while terribly recycled are easy to gloss over because of the elegant integration with physics. The little things are what also help this shine. 3) Sound of a fleeing mutant getting shot in the back, letting out an adorable shriek, and splattering against the pavement never gets old. Gore, even though visually overdone, somehow doesn't feel overdone as a whole package, very... Artfully balanced. Maybe cause its nice to go all jackson pollock on the muties. Still processing why. CONS: 1)The nemesis system feels more punishment than encouragement, with the mutie getting super jacked up and somehow spawning with only (1?) of the weapons he seemingly looted instead of 2? Either way on my 8th tourist, I figured it was pretty much the fault of the random generation not being very... Fair? In a game where every scarce healthpoint counts, having such a seemingly diverse and random variety and position of mobs from even the starting zone, felt a bit cheap. I had really simple cheese runs to dying within the first two levels due to (early?) grenadiers... their blast radius... Omfggg 2)Explosive destructibles. Initially, i felt the abundance of damaging props in the surroundings were a lazy attempt at filling the level, but once faced with a random assigned HUGE MOB, kiting them in and around the various destructibles helped thin out their ranks was indispensable to progressing. Sometimes tooo forced, feels like im at a tactical disadvantage for not utilising barrels, after all isnt this meant to reward mano-a-mutant marksmanship? Probably just me? (also.. Fully charged cooking glove and explosive barrels are a bit too imba? !) 2) mutations are sometimes too obviously useful (convert ammo to hp) and becomes a bit game breaking, no encouragement for experimentation and risk/reward play for me as I think dying at the final boss because of a 'telefrag' spawn kinda sucks ass! 55 minutes in, i dont think making myself 'stronger' with a spray matters all that much, if what im building towards in terms of loadout(which lets face it, IS the game), is never certain. Too many layers of such randomness did not encourage me to dial in on the tactics i enjoyed so much of as mentioned above, and since time-to-be-killed especially sucks to fun out of/does not encourage me to try out the vastly unique range of weapons. I'm sad to have learnt that the devs will no longer be supporting the game for the forseeable future but I look forward to following their work. Keep it up you two! I love your taste, and thanks for having made this.

Seriously, why isn't this game more popular ? It has a great visual style, a very good gameplay that has managed to strike a perfect balance between tactic and mindless slaughter, it has a lot of weapons, and since you can dual-wield every one-handed weapons, there's many, many combo to try ! I love the big splatters of pinkish blood, and the impact of weapons, whether melee, explosive, shotgun-like, laser-like or regulars feels very satisfying. You're not just hiting sprites in a videogame, you can really feel them exploding to bits ... it just feels great, i dunno. And like i said, it's not a game of mindless slaughter ... entirely. As the game progresses, you have to get better and devellop strategies, either for trapping enemies in a choke hold or near explosive stuff, or to find the best combo of weapon that allows you to deal with every situation. You're not just blasting mutated tourists, you're thinking, too. It's ... a smart kind of slaughter. If you just go in and blast everything, you will die fast. It's not the hardest isaac-like, but it's not easy. Ah ! And there's this thing called Nemesises. Nemesiss. Nemeses. Nemesis plural. See when you die, the ex-tourist, now mutated psycho-monster who killed you, takes your stuff, and gets a MASSIVE boost of strenght and possibly, self-confidence, turning him into a ... Nemesis ! STAAAAAARS ! (it don't say Staaaaars. i'm just emotionnaly scarred by RE3) And The next tourist you play is gonna have to deal with it. It's fun. It turns a game over into something fun. How many games managed to achieve that, huh ? It's. a. good. Game !! It's smart, it's violent, sound design is great, it has local cool if you happen to have non-digital friends, it's just a good game ! Buy it ! And then publish a review here so it gets more sells because it fuckin deserve it ! Maybe it doesn't have enough mutations though ... (passives you get for leveling) Wish there was at least a dozen more ... I don't know, companions, satellites, this kind of thing. But it's a minor gripe really. Thanks for reading. I'm french, doing my best with english. Hope it's alright.

[h1] Fun little game where you find yourself on a different planet. Mission is simple - terminate everything that's moving. You travel from city to city choosing which path you wanna go. Goal is to get to opposite side of the map. Each place have various resources like weapons, health, ammo and utilities. Taking down aliens give you some mutagen points which can be used for various upgrades which are random generated but you can pick one from a few available at the moment. You can have two sets of weapon for each hand that can be swap depending on situation. Please note that there is no dodging are dashing system here so your character is likely to get hit anyway. Game is good suited for coop. Graphics welcome you with vivid colors. Sound and music is nice and fits well. Recommend mostly for coop, but can be played alone as well. [/h1]

It's a pretty good "roguelite" shooter in terms of design, gameplay and presentation. It's a bit slower paced than most other shooters and enemy variety is based on equipment and enemy size. Their behaviour does not vary at all, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. The nemesis system implementation is kinda fun. But I gotta mention the cons. This game is seriously lacking content. I'm gonna go through a list just to make the point clear: [list][*]There seems to be only 1 unlockable character and not that different anyway. [*]There's no difficulty selection. [*]No music, just dark, dreary ambient sound in the background. [*]I've already unlocked all perks, there's not that many and they don't change that much anyway. [*]There's not a whole lot of mutations and again, they're not that exciting, but they do help quite a bit. [*]While I like the selection of weapons, I just end up picking mostly the same stuff everytime and there's not that many. [*]The game is almost completely linear and all 3 areas are corridors and tend to look the same. [*]WHERE'S THE UNLOCKABLES?! This is probably its biggest sin. I feel done already. Just thinking about playing this again bores me. [/list] An example on how dull this game ends up feeling: Completing a run is just super unsatisfying. You beat a boss (it's no Isaac's mom) and then that's it. A text box pops up and you're done... yay? Remember how awesome and triumphant it felt to complete Binding of Isaac only to realize that there are many other ways to beat the game and with different bosses. This game just falls flat on its face and farts in your face with its bare a$$ staring at you. The gamepad controls are very strange. In this game you move fast if you aim in the direction you're moving, this makes sense for M+KB. But the controls have clearly not been properly adjusted for gamepads. You have to constantly be aiming with the right stick. Letting go off it just leaves the aim where you last had it instead of the left stick overriding the right stick if the right stick is in a neutral position so that you can move fast without having to aiming all the freaking time. Navigating menus is a pain with the gamepad as well. The cursor just never goes where it should. Do not pay full price for this. In fact, comparing this to Relic Hunters Zero (a totally free roguelike shooter) and the lack of content becomes really embarrasing. Go play that instead, it's a lot better. Again, this really isn't bad, just kinda pointless as a roguelike for the price you pay.