Freaky Awesome Reviews

Its just not enjoyable to play, the pacing is way too slow and grindy to get any fun out of the gameplay. I am very disappointed in the game as I have been waiting a long time to finally play it. [h1]Pros:[/h1] + the music is fantastic + the artsytle is awesome + the game runs solid, no crashes or bugs of any sort + randomly generated + online and offline coop for up to 4 players + unlock perks in a perk-tree + controller controls are fine [h1]Cons:[/h1] - the pacing of the game is way too slow, meaning unlockables and new mutations come in way too rarely, which leaves you with the same old stuff for hours.....its not fun when theres no progression, especially in a roguelike. I was able to unlock one additional mutation in 2,5 hours, which makes it 3 in total.....I wanna try new stuff. Imagine Binding of Isaac only having 3 items..... - the pick-ups in the game are way too few, theres just a handful of items to use ingame and some are way too similar - the mutations and their abilities are not really thought out it seems. Every form has 2 abilities, the anglerfish mutation has a chargeattack and an electric field for a second.....the electric field does almost no damage, there is no point in using it whatsoever. The stretchneck mutation can lay an egg, which has a very long delay to hatch and then a worm comes out to attack your enemy....it gets defeated with one hit and does almost no damage, its just pointless - way too few enemies and enemy types, it gets boring way too fast to fight the same guys over and over again - its not a twin stick shooter, meaning you attack in the direction you walk, which is a very bad gamedesign decision in my opinion. Some enemies are faster than you can walk, meaning you have to take a hit, since for attacking, you have to face them and run into them.... - there is one boss that is completely unbalanced and I couldnt manage to beat him once, with the 3 mutations I have, you have to get near him to attack, but the boss does this area of damage attack, which almost always guarantees to hit you and even then if you defeat him, he has 2 more forms and gets more walking speed......this boss can appear in the very first dungeon, its completely unbalanced. In his first form he has as much HP as any other boss, so its like defeating 3 bosses at once, and the reward is also just the same amount of DNA you would get as for the other bosses.... - its not coop at all!!! When playing together with others, its who comes first is served first, meaning nothing is shared by the group like coins and items.....its a free for all and competitve, which is the opposite of coop, at the end of a dungeon it even shows whether you placed 1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4th.....so basically you dont want your fellow mates to collect anything and grab everything for yourself to place first to get the most coins in the end.....this is unbelievable, since the game advertises coop so big. Coop means COOPERATIVE not competitive! - you unlock stuff with DNA, which you get from defeating bosses or sometimes can be bought for coins. The pacing is way too slow, you first unlock stuff with 1 DNA and then all of a sudden with 12! The sudden rise up comes out of nowhere and it takes forever to get 12 DNA - the random generation of the levels is boring. All the dungeons feel the exact same to me, the difference is so small you can say its always the same layout, even the rooms themselves are kinda bland - all of the extra rooms that you have to open up with coins or a key are not rewarding at all!!! Almost always, like 99% of the time there is just another normal room with enemies to defeat.....like why? - I said the artsyle is cool, but its downright a carbon copy of CRAWL. even the text font is almost exactly the same. Mandragora has nothing to do with Crawl as far as I know - the Halloween Event is one of the most terrible ones Ive seen in a game. Bombs just randomly drop from the sky and hit you......Happy Halloween I so regret buying this game. It may not be the most terrible roguelike, but it certainly is not a game I would spend more time on either. There are just way better games in the genre. I dont think the game is going to drastically change so much, that I would come back at a later date. Cant recommend it at all. Buy Enter the Gungeon, Azura or Binding of Isaac instead.

Sure it takes some time to get used to, but it has its charms and mystery. Update: I was hunting for secret rooms, I wanted to find something that is hidden under the surface, because let's be honest nothing is explained in this game well. I looked up everywhere I could, tried everything but this game is just very plain, superficial. I wanted to be proved wrong, I wanted to see that this is a game like Enter the Gungeon with loads of hidden content and great progression which starts a little later with this one, and terrible controls, but still I wanted to believe. At this point I gave up and had to conclude that this was a great idea badly implemented. Thinking that making people grind would make up for the lack of content, but this game is like a poor attempt at a rougelike. The closest to this would be Neon Abyss, but that game is a lot better. So only try this if it's 90% off. At least you see something different for a couple hours, but don't have high hopes. 90% off recommended.

One of the better Rogue-Likes I've played. Freaky Awesome succeeds and innovates in all the right places to make each run through it's mutant-filled factory challenging, varied, and fun. You play a washed-up actor on a desperate search for his lost dog. So desperate, this guy does not think twice about mutating into horrifying monstrosities in the process (that's a true dog owner there). The way the mutations work is that each time you fell an enemy, they leave behind toxic goo. The goo heals you, but also builds up a seperate Mutation Meter. When that meter fills up, you mutate into a new form. You choose 3 such forms before the start of each run, and you have a choice between 2 of them each mutation; meaning you cannot stay as the same one mutation the whole game. Some favor ranged attacks, others melee, some are slow and tough, others fast and fragile. Plus, all the goo you gather is tallied at the end of each level, which then let you unlock perks for your forms. This allows you to buff your favorite/prefered forms each run, and there's enough variety in the perks that you can wind up with different play styles with the same forms each time you play. As a Rogue-Like, obviously you are going to die a lot. But this is one of the few that does its best to reduce the frustration of constant deaths without taking away the challenge. For one, the gameplay is a little slow, so you don't need hyper-reflexes to succeed (*coughnuclearthrone*), and you have a pretty sizeable life bar and regular healing through defeated enemies, so its rare for you to die suddenly to stuff you don't see coming. Which is not to say the battles don't get chaotic though. Each run, you can collect DNA items, bought from shops or acquired from defeated bosses. That DNA is collected at the end of the run, success or death, which you can use to buy permanent upgrades, or unlock slots to let you equip more of those upgrades. You can also use money found to upgrade the stores, which increases the number of quality of items you can buy in all future runs. Unlocking new forms requires huge investments of money, keys and your own blood, but each investment persists into the future runs. All of this means you never waste time dying in a run; you still got some DNA, put more coins towards upgrading the store or got a few keys/gold/blood more towards your next mutation. The game isn't flawless of course. A lot of the battles revolve around running around in a circle trying to get enough distance to turn around and hit your enemies before they strike you as well. Some of the perks and upgrades you get are sometimes unintentionally harmful, like the ones that leave oil slicks behind (they usually slow you down more often than enemies). Some of the mutations you get don't always feel balanced, some feel much better than others, and there too few of them. All the randomness doesn't quite alleviate the repetitiveness that will inevitably set in. This is still one of the better Rogue-Likes I've played, and I think out of ALL of them, this one smoothes over the rough edges that can make most Rogue-Likes unfun. Whenever you die, chances are you are still made some progress, and each run, there's a good chance you'll make it to the end. And each time you do, the story progresses and new events unlock. If you like Rogue-Likes, buy this game. If you enjoyed the likes of Nuclear Throne, Rogue Legacy and The Binding of Isac, buy this game. If you want to try out a Rogue-Like, but the above games rubbed you the wrong way, this game might be what you're looking for. It is, afterall, Freaky Awesome :) !

**ABANDONED BY DEVELOPERS** I liked this game a lot when my friend and I got it, but I feel like I need to put a modern review out there to let people know the state of the game. It is fun, it's got good music and really cool concepts, and the various play-styles brought by the characters are a lot of fun. HOWEVER, the content is slightly lacking, and more importantly, there are still many known bugs in-game, and it has been utterly abandoned. Sometime mid-development, the devs just packed up without warning, and announced their new game. Many of the bugs that my friend and I have found are utterly game-breaking. Most of the time, we can't even play together because if either of us dies, that doesn't register for the other player and it becomes impossible to progress. TLDR: While the can be fun, there are a lot of know game-breaking bugs, and the devs still abandoned for a new project.

I wanted to recommend this game so much when I started playing it. Looked like a hidden gem made with love. But it is what it is - a mutated mess, and I don't recommend touching it. Game mechanics were tweaked several times, but it feels like developers did not know what they wanted with this game. It has some nice pixel art graphics and soundtrack. That is all. No deep gameplay, you stay almost the same throughout the game (or at least try to, since most mutations are useless, and so are most items). Game is buggy, glitchy and unfinished. Achievements don't unlock. Co-op is terrible. Enemies are mostly the same throughout the game. Most of the times it feels unfair and not hard. What a shame, could be such a game.

The game is good, but definitely not as good as it could be. Being a rogue-like, it seems like there are times where you can't avoid being hit due to being too slow. Multiplayer is in beta, but it's functional and a huge plus for this game. I'm going to make some more progress and see what's up, because so far it seems a bit slow for a rogue-like.

Just here to chime in with some of the other folks but in short: PROS: - Great music. Like, actually, seriously great. - Amazing animations and pixel art, feels like a lost Sega Genesis game - Really cool gameplay concept and it enhances the core roguelike idea/formula (mutating into new gameplay mechanics) - Each new level/floor introduces lots of new gameplay mechanics that meaningfully change gameplay CONS: - The biggest con for me is simply that this game is way too hard for not much reward. The game will absolutely wreck you and you'll only be bouncing back and forth between 1 of 3 fairly basic mutant forms for the first like, 10 hours. - The other new mutant forms you find are incredibly rare and difficult to unlock, let alone even use. It takes often times upwards of 10 of every collectible AND 10 health to unlock, and you'll only be able to use them for a brief period of time due to how health recovery works - Poor documentation. Many things are poorly explained or not explained at all and it's simply frustrating. Sometimes I can get multiple mutations inbetween levels, sometimes only one. Sometimes I can mutate into other forms and sometimes I can't. I can upgrade the shop but it's not clear what benefits that gives. It tells me what items I missed but not where they were. - The difficulty curve is insane. The later levels have hazards that seriously take up half the play area while also introducing enemies that can hit you from anywhere. - There's just not enough here. The core gameplay is really fun and there's a lot of promise here but as it stands I just can't recommend it, it's insanely repetitive and there's just very little gameplay variety, and unlocks are PAINFULLY slow.

I've never written a Steam review before, but as the devs appear to actually take player feedback into account I thought I'd share my thoughts on Freaky Awesome. Honestly, this game has been a pretty big dissapointment. Its not that there isn't alot of great design, art and content here - quite the opposite - its that Freaky Awesome is filled with design decisions that ruin its massive potential. I hope that the devs see this and consider making more changes like they have been doing so recently. Here's what the game does right: - The MUSIC - it's fantastic. Whilst the tracks in the last(?) two floors are slightly underwhelming, the music for the first 3 is amazing - probably better than Enter The Gungeon's, which is saying something. - The ART STYLE. I like pixel art. This game has decent pixel art. Check the screenshots or gameplay footage to see what I mean. I'm not a fan of the slightly uglier boss designs, which contrast heavily with the lower-res player graphics, but they're servicable. - The GAMEPLAY (kinda). There are alot of genuinely impressive design elements in this roguelike. You get to kick barrels into enemies, block up crates of dynamites, kick barrels into dynamite, use dynamite to blow up hard blocks...etc. There's almost a level of strategy that these elements bring to the game. You also get various bomb types, from grenades and mines to fireworks and homing missiles. The variety is welcome and they largely serve a genuine purpose in gameplay. Other than that, it's difficult to think of other things that FA does well. There are just some MASSIVE issues with this game that make it so that after only 7hrs of gameplay its began to feel stale and frustrating - two things that should NEVER happen with a roguelike so soon. Here's what the game does wrong: The ENEMIES: there are good designs here, but they're executed poorly. Most enemies move WAY TOO FAST to allow players to genuinely strategise and hit enemies without getting hit back. This is most often the case with the spiders. Unless you want to tediously juke them into attacking, and then retaliate, you have to tank hits to clear a room. NOT fun. Beyond this, the health of the standard enemies is almost uniform, meaning that theres no necesarry strategy to taking out certain enemies. Most of them do similar amounts of damage, which compounds the problem further. There aren't many enemy verieties, either. The MUTATIONS: the 'quirk' of this game is the mutation system. My main issue with it is that most of the mutations are too slow, have boring/useless alt attacks and are inferior to the basic chicken mutation, which can kick and dodge roll. Most of the other mutations have no genuine evasive meneuvour, meaning that you once again have to tank hits instead of master the combat system, because there's nothing to master. Even the chicken could be improved - for whatever reason the devs made the dodge roll the same speed as walking, so you don't feel like you're rolling, which again produces lack of strategy, which is what people play roguelikes for in the FIRST PLACE. The LEVEL DESIGN: Keys are somehwat useless and tacked on, as I've not once found anything noteworthy in a room locked off by a padlock. Whats the point of having keys in the game if they don't feel particularly valuable? I don't get it. Also, most of the last floor rooms are too small for the number of enemies - its a massive letdown for players that have gone so far into the game The ITEMS: Items make or break roguelikes. FA has bad items - to let potential buyers know upfront, almost all of them are familiars that follow you: think Bob's Brain from Binding of isaac. I've not once bought anything from the shop because grenades are more powerful that buzzsaws that follow you around. I honestly think that game would be better if these useless items were replaced by the perks. Instead of buying an inkwell, you could buy Rage for 15 coins, giving you better damage for the run, etc. Just a thought. To improve the game the devs could: Make fast enemies slower Put stronger enemies in sooner (like the 'furnace' floor has giants) Give all mutations an evasive maneouveour like Chicken's roll Put in proper items into the game that function like perks. Give enemies, PARTICULARLY BOSSES, more attacks so that the battles are tenser, less repetitive and more strategic. This could be a GREAT game if the devs fix these rather basic design issues, but I can't recommend Freaky Awesome as it stands today. I'm hoping the devs keep updating this and listen to the feedback.

I was kind of on the fence about this during my first few playthroughs...but after several playthroughs by myself and with my kid, I've grown to really enjoy it!! It gives off a Mutant League Football vibe and that makes me REALLY enjoy it. PROS: - Gameplay is solid, smooth and satisfying - Music is incredible - Mutations (that I've unlocked thus far) are different enough to encourage different ones. Even though I have favorites. - Multiplayer is hilarious and fun. - Currency is pretty prevelent. - Encourages high skill play with the heal/mutation. If you don't want to mutate...don't get hit nub CONS: - It might feel like some playthroughs are a complete wash due to no DNA. - I feel like DNA needs to be a tad easier to obtain outside of bosses. - I wish the skin color you pick for your new playthrough went through to the Quick Play but that's really not a big deal...or a small deal...Just a nitpick. ...that's...really it imo. I at least suggest you try this game if you're into the new fangled version of roguelikes that are out nowadays. It's really unique and awesome!!!

I see some serious potential in this title. I'd even go as far and say its potential could be Isaac 2.0 material. But I can't recommend the game in its current state. The game seems & plays as a woefully early release. As seen by the 4 minor updates, not even a week after its release. Positive notes. I like that it saves your progress on mutation chambers, so you don't have to start over when you do finally encounter one. The mutations is a nice idea, that requires you to change you playstyle on the fly. Also the subtle level is strategy, that you can pick up all the snot now so you don't have to backtrack. Or you can save it, in case of a bad room and need to regain health. The online feature is nice(although in the same state as the game.) The negatives. It feels really un-organic to explore the game. I've encountered a couple of times where 80% of the map was locked off, because I didn't have any keys. Which ofc once I completed the floor, the "things you missed" helpfully reminded me was all behind said locked doors. I'm all for rogue-lite, but that feels really unfinished in the random generation. Also the maps twist and turn into itself for no reason. The rooms are very close and the map seems small, but you can only travel the map via the provided doors. Many(Maybe even most) of the rooms aren't connected, which only feels like an attempt to pad gameplay out. The skill system needs some attention as well. How it works is, that you kill a boss and aquire 1 DNA. Which you can spend on skills and skill slots. You get the first slot free, second costs 3, but the third costs ballpunching freaking 12 DNA to unlock? With the rate you earn DNA(1-3 per run depending on skill) that seems way to early in the game to ask for that ammount. Sure you can unlock more skills themself, but you'd still only be able to use two at a time. The passive items seems really unintuitive, they're all just a slightly different version of things that follow you around, at least so far. Also there's still the issue with 2-3 enemy types that actually damage you before their attack animation... Final thought. The rate at which you get new mutations(weapons/playstyle) is what ultimately made me make this review. Almost 3 hours it took to aquire a new mutation. If the game in itself was really enjoyable and you felt like you where actually working towards something, say like Enter the Gungeon or The binding of Isaac etc. I wouldn't mind the slow windup. But in both games mentioned, even at that ammount of hours, you're invested. After this many hours in Freaky Awesome, I'm ready to call it quits. Maybe wait for another week or two before buying. Which should give the game 5 - 10 patches to hopefully unearth some of that so promising potential.