Gone Viral Reviews

I find the game boring. Typical dungeon crawler rogue like. Except it isn't as good as others.

What an addictive game (i played 2 hours of demo before purchasing). Loads of varied traps and combo attacks combined with abilities/perks in randomly generated rooms/maps. Pushing enemies over flames or impale on spikes or push into spike pits, two examples of the multitudes of ways to dispatch them. Humour abounds throughout the game. The control system of your character is the key to what makes these types of games fun , and these devs have done it well. Original Twitch streamer features within game. Ace artwork, music, sound effects/voiceovers, together with what i have stated already make for a great game.

Please make a Wildstar successor, even if it's a small game.

If you want to make comparisons to other games, this is Enter The Binding of Smash TV, and if you understood that reference, this game is for you. It doesn't take itself seriously because it can't, there's just no way to sell this tone other than zany and over the top, so if you're looking for gritty it ain't here. I'm a big fan of twin stick roguelikes, but a common complaint I hear when I try to attract my friends to the genre is that they don't want to take the time to slowly, painfully learn all the item effects and enemy patterns to be able to string together a good run. In your first few runs of Gone Viral, it doesn't matter what the mutations do, pick them up, they're fun. Are they good for your build? Who cares, they're fun. Figuring out the cool interplay between different mutations can come later, and it will, through natural gameplay experimentation. In the early difficulties, pickups are plentiful and taking hits isn't brutally punishing, so you have space to learn and feel out the traps and enemies. I definitely feel like this will come off as too easy to veterans of the genre, but the difficulty scales up with successive runs. Sessions are reasonably short, so there isn't a lot of unnecessary cruft between picking up the controller and enjoying your build. The automated viewer mechanics are neat, and it's great that it allows people like me to enjoy all the game's features who may not have a couple hundred friends to stream to, but if you are one of those streamers, I can only imagine how fun it would be for viewers to take over the events. I can't wait to see new levels added so I can take my runs deeper, that's basically my only complaint right now: what we have is extremely polished, and I know it just hit early access, but I want more of it.

I'm loving this game! Every run is different due to the mutations and room layouts. Even if you wanted to repeat the same game (they let you save a seed code to repeat it or share your madness) you can still make different power up choices and customize each game. There's even a difficulty adjustment available so you can relax and play around, or really crank it up and push yourself. The mechanics are simple, and rewarding when you line up strikes to get pinball kills, trap kills, or otherwise use the room's death traps to your advantage and beat the challenges. There's plenty of replay here, and the music is cool. I liked that they have a demo out to try before you buy!

SMASH TV 2020: Virus of the Year Edition. This was an instant buy for me. I love roguelites, I love twin stick action, and I love the idea that I am on a futuristic gladiatorial combat show. I thoroughly enjoyed the beta and can attest to the fact that it remains tremendously slick and fun now that it has been given an early access release. The premise is very much Running Man but for the streamer / influencer age. You are on a sick intergalactic TV show in which it is your one goal to kill everything that moves so that you might garner a following of fans and become the next household name. This may result in your eventual freedom, but at the minute, there isn't much of a story. Who needs a story when you're mercilessly slaying all those who stand in your way?! Gameplay is fast and frantic. Very much lights, cameras and [b] ACTION!! [/b] Each run is randomly generated and depending on the loot you will find, you will either fail miserably or annihilate everything that stands in your way. My first run had me gain almost superhuman abilities by the end so that even the mighty bosses were no match for my fury. Like many roguelites, there is a unique hook to this game in the form of mutations. These are the enhancements and upgrades for your player character. Think something along the lines of RAD (from Double Fine), but lovingly blended with classic Smash TV action and you are in the general area. Twin stick twitchies are the nature of this beast. Depending on your weapon you will either be aiming ferocious melee attacks on the horde, or raining some kind of bullet storm upon them. I was blowing bubbles for the first run, which sounds ridiculous, but it was RIDICULOUSLY AWESOME!! There is lots of humour in the game; many of your weapons, abilities and upgrades are crazy. However, no matter how stupid they may sound, they all enable a glorious spectacle of death. As you gain notoriety, your fan base will award you loot crates which usually contain hearts, keys and bombs. These replenish your HP (natch), let you into secret areas and allow you to engage in some strategic exothermic fun. Sometimes you will be rewarded with armour, mutations or other upgrades. You will have to choose wisely as some pickups will replace your currently held items. Generally, you can adopt new playing styles on the fly as you harness new and exciting ways to maim, mutilate and murder. As with many Early Access titles, the game is well formed and functional. There is a start, middle and end, and everything is in working order. Content is currently at about 50% of the expected final game, however the developer estimates that you will have around ten hours of play before seeing everything. New playable characters, mutations, weapons, items, enemies, bosses, tile sets, achievements and difficulty levels will be added over the development cycle so I'm guessing by the end there will be 20+ hours worth of game. For those of us who have jumped on the blood thirsty bandwagon from the start of the journey, we will be rewarded with cosmetic loot to style up our viral gladiators which of course is really what all the kids want nowadays! I will be dipping into this game frequently as runs can last fifteen minutes to an hour, depending on how the dice roll for you so it does not demand a huge time investment. I look forward to each and every update and I will be following along with the developers to see where this goes.

Was scrolling through the dungeon crawler tag when I saw this, it looked neat so I bought it. It's pretty good for an early access game right now. I like how your fans will affect your game play, I've never really seen it in other games before. Here's my understanding of it so far: Basically, each run you have a different category of fans, and you'll earn more of that particular type of fan if you do something they like. They might also get pissed off if you grab a perk they don't like. Fans will also give you loot boxes (which can be good or bad depending on what you've done) at fan count milestones. They can also vote for different special events that can happen in rooms. I don't really like how often the events happen though, they occur often enough that it doesn't feel special and turns into more of an annoyance. There's a lot of variety in the rooms too. They're varied enough that every room you encounter will feel at least slightly new. There is a room where you could unlock a new character, but it requires the use of so many keys. It seems a little bit difficult to me, especially when the room comes up on one of the earlier levels. I haven't beaten every level so I don't know if the room repeats. The perks are well developed and interesting. There's a lot of different ones and I haven't even discovered all of them yet. You won't be able to tell what they do until you pick them up for the first time, but every run after that there will be a description before you pick it up. Not every perk works well together. [b] Okay, so here's the thing: [/b] If you're impatient and used to brute forcing through the game (like me!!!) then you will die a lot, even in easy mode. Or maybe I'm just bad, lol idk. Anyways, your starting weapon isn't that good and it doesn't damage enemies a ton. The combat in this game heavily relies on knocking your enemies into the environment (such as pits/spikes/other enemies) to damage them. You [i] could [/i] get away with just smacking them with your sword, but you will not make it very far unless you plan how hit your enemies. Thankfully, there's a little arrow that shows you which way they're going to be knocked towards, so it's not too hard to knock them into a pit. I won't be saying much else in this review (right now at least) since I haven't played a ton, but you can look at other reviews since they've reviewed other aspects of the game that I hadn't thought of a lot more than me. TDLR: There's not too much but its pretty good for an early access game.

Im giving this game a thumps up cause im havin fun while playing it but im going to give an honest review hoping that the devs will see it. The game is actually a mele Isaac clone with better graphics and music BUT it lacks in relics big time (i know its still in early access) and you never get these "overpowered" runs you would get in Isaac.. It also lacks in enemies and you find the same ones (6-7 types of enemies) again and again.The bosses are actually fun and interesting.The events need a bit balance cause many times you get in rooms full of enemies and with the events together its super sure that you ll get damaged..The drops need a bit balance too cause there are many runs that you cant even find enough shields..The main character is fun with nice skills but the rest two characters are 99% unplayable.The second character needs to never get dmg or find extremely many shields (and this happens 1 in 50 runs) and the third character has the slowest attack in the history of videogames and if you miss it you get dmg so its unplayable too.. i feel that these 2 characters need a huge rework..A ranged character would be fun i think (i know that there are ranged weapons but still its not sure if you ll find one or not).. The game is nice and the whole idea too but the game needs balancing and reworks to be a super great game.. I hope we see more relics and more unique ones in the next updates so every runs is different than the last one. 7/10

Decided to give this one a shot, anyone who loves Roguelites knows there's a dozen of them out there, some not so good. I started this game thinking I'll play for a bit then right a review, I actually got so caught up in it I almost missed a meeting... So for my brief time playing, I can say I really enjoy it. UPDATE: Finished my first full run and added some more thoughts. Pros: -Great atmosphere. I love the cameras everywhere, the fan count, the cheeky descriptions of things, the voting system on what event happens next etc. -Good variety of room mechanics (chests, traps, items, layout, enemies) -Fans can call in gift drops, which is a fun little way to get perks and makes you want to get those combos and such. -Good minimap that calls out rooms that have hearts/keys/coins/armor in them -Events are fun and breaks up the grind. -Combat feels good, hitting enemies into traps or pin balling them feels great -UI is clean and easy to understand -Mutators have cause visible changes to your character (most of them) -Fun variety of items (gadgets - one time use, mutators - power ups, carnage items - think spells that carnage refills) -The first character has his right click as a grappling hook, kinda like Scorpion from MK. Very fun to pull enemies in to traps or grab that gunner. -Rocket launcher Cons: -Although some of the descriptions of the mutations are fun and give me a chuckle, you have to hit ESC and then click on it to see what it actually does -Sometimes you see a green thumbs up or a red thumbs down when you have the choice of mutators, have no idea that that means still. -No real feeling of permanent progression between runs like some roguelites offer. -You can easily have a gadget fall into a pit or some such by walking over another one. I would love to have a "pick up gadget" button to prevent this. Especially when you have the "biggest fan" mod, you can't even jump into the pit to get them, they're just gone.

[b]September 2020:[/b] Gone Viral releases into early access with a great deal of grandiose talk and promises about coming updates, roadmaps, even coming roadmaps because just [i]so much[/i] will get added. Here are some tidbits:[list][*][i]"Every time we do a Major Update in Early Access ([b]and we’re planning LOTS![/b]) we’ll also be giving away a unique, limited cosmetic item"[/i] [*][i]"Unlike other roadmaps, though, we intend to update this bad boy a lot. Like, a lot a lot. Every time we release or announce a major update, we'll probably update the roadmap to give you a bit of a heads up on what our current trajectory is."[/i] [*][i]"We put down five boxes just to look pretty, that isn't to imply that there's only going to be five updates throughout early access."[/i][/list] [b]November 2020:[/b] First "major" update. [i]"Welcome to our first (of many!) Major Update!"[/i] [b]August 2021:[/b] Released from early access. Release patch notes markedly shorter than the major update, despite over six months without even a patch update. Yeah... Not too hard to work out from there how the developers delivered on this project. Be wary of early access reviews colored by optimism and dev support. Note the comment from the dev below, where they say their promises were based on zero plan and merely hoped early access sales would magically fund all the development they sold their customers (something Valve warns developers not to do), even without them actually delivering any of said content. The release update is not even a good showing, let alone the nine months of development that should have been going into it, and is simply not the game they were selling. It had some neat ideas, but the gameplay never really felt good, the enemies are pretty terrible/boring, and pretty much any feedback was met with effusive handwaving about how amazing everything is or will be, but not with change or improvement.