Fallback Reviews

+interesting and beautiful level design +fluid movement and combat (even without controller) Great game and "the most 3D you can get out of a 2D platformer" (quote from another review)

This game is amazing in so many unique ways that I am not sure I can describe well. It is kind of the perfect rogue like for me, but somehow I suck at it. I have never finished a run. Granted I do play on hard, but not only have I never finished a run, I have never even gotten close in fact. I died in the first room in the foundry (final level) every time so far. Here is why this game is so fucking good and perfect for me: 1. It is 100% skill based. Realistically you won't be able to, but you can beat this game without any of the stat and ablility progression or any new character. Nothing is unfair. If you die, it is your fault. Anyone who tells you otherwise is a malding scrub. The thing that will improve the most over the runs is yourself. Taking damage is insanely punishing, especially in the foundry, where you will most likely die in 3 hits at most. So better git gut (I am not there yet lmao). Yes, also platforming is 100% skill based and you will never get trolled with cheap deaths (falling is also very punishing, not instakill but a big chunk of your hp). 2. The perspective allows for all the benefits of simplistic intuitive gameplay that 2D sidescrollers have and the 3-dimensional looping back in on itself level design that only 3D games can achieve. I would call it a 3D sidescroller, where your movement is 2-dimensional but the level design is 3-dimensional because the movement dimension is not a straight line but curves that can converge and create junctions in which you can jump from one perspective to another, which takes a lot of time to get used to, but once you get it, it feels insane how the entire world keeps looping in on itself. This also allows for the platforming to be very precise and intuitive. 3. The random level generation is the best I have ever seen in a rogue like. This is mostly, because of the unique innovative perspective. There is a set amount of base room layouts, but there are a lot. I would say I should have seen every single one for the first level by now, but it took about 60 runs to do so. Some will be there a lot more often than others. The base layouts change a lot, with different obstacles, reward tracks, blocked off paths, enemy varieties, etc. I don't think I have ever seen the exact same room layout twice so far. Some base rules are: There are two paths (left and right) to go from the starting room, with a lot more opening up the farther you get. If you go far enough in one direction, you, will in the end, end up getting to the starting room meaning it will always loop in on itself. Every room follows those rules as well, I believe with some being a lot more complicated than others (4 way junctions can mind fuck you when you first start getting used to the perspective). I am pretty sure there are no dead big dead ends where a room just leads to a reward or something, so exploration feels very natural and if you get used to it, you can really map out the 3-dimensional level in this 2D game. That sounds so insane, but that is the brilliance of this perspective. 3. Graphics, animations and Sfx are really, really good. I don't know how they nailed this as the first game of an indie studio, but the game sounds and looks gorgeous. It nails the post apocalyptic cyberpunk feel, with the character animations been so crisp that it can get quite immersive at times. This game is below 10 bucks. How they did this is beyond me. This is what makes the combat and platforming so satisfying as well. Everything from jumping to swinging your weapon to getting hit is so dependant on these aspects that a skill based game like this absolutely needs to have this down and here they absolutely have. Here are some personal small gripes I have: I don't like pure stat progression in rogue likes. This has a lot of pure stat progression. Not a major issue, as this is mostly just help for people being bad and the game being completely skill based means, that you don't need any of them and they are mostly just to help you get over the line. The abilities are modules and until you get all modul upgrades, they are a bit repetitive. I unlocked them all now and now the game feels a lot better. But due to the punishing nature, it can sometimes feel really tough if you don't get the best of the best. A lot of the runs feel like I should reset, because the damage I am dealing and taking is too bad for me to finish. Overall, couldn't recommend this game enough to anyone, even if it was 25 Euros. At 10 this is just an absolute steal for all the effort that has been put into this game. GET IT NOW. Or I will kiss you on your lips.

Recommending, because it really *is* fun, but *SUPER* conditional recommendation. So the game is clearly not really made for MKB, but it does let you change the controls, so it's perfectly playable; there is the annoying factor that in menu screens it still requires using the arrow keys (why?) and for some reason it likes to hit the task bar a lot (having duel monitors makes this easy to fix, but if you don't... gl.. it doesn't pause when you tab out so RIP..). For me, this is an obnoxious but not game ruining bug, but something one should really think about before buying. Beyond that... Me, buying this game, thinking a platformer rougelite about kicking robots asses sounds awesome. Me, actually playing the game, wondering what the fuck kinda math these devs are using... "38, 2, 19, 9, 3, _." What? Fuck I mean, I didn't think I was bad at these but dayum lol... Seriously, though, make this game more keyboard and mouse friendly and it'd be a 10/10 game, it's a blast when not having to worry about tabbing out ;P As it stands, with dual monitors it's an 8/10, and honestly, I wouldn't play it on a single monitor myself. Edit: Okay, so bc they don't tell you the correct number when you get it wrong, I googled it, I'm on some site called "next number" and it has no clue what the next number would be either lol.. If anyone smarter than me is reading this, by all means comment the answer and how you got that????

6 classes with only 2 active skills for each class also with no cool combo just keep repeat the same move forever really a boring game rogue lite game,yes action game, nah

Despite me being bad at this game, I keep firing it up for a few runs. Fallback is a small gem, tough and enjoyable at the same time. Every run is very different thanks to the numerous abilites, heroes profile you can choose from, and procedural level generation. If you feel overwhelmed by the unforgiving nature of the game, you can spend hard-earned points (depicted by prisoners you freed) on a skill tree to boost your future characters. All in all, Fallback is a great game that will keep you busy for hours (let's say around 10hrs for regular player, and significantly more for me heheh :D).

Really nice roguelite with enough variation to not make it feel repetitive. If you are like me and like to complete your games, this game allows you to unlock every achievement even in easy which is really fun and allowed me to do long runs when I had the time. The only achievement I had to grind was the 100 deaths. Fallback feels like a hidden gem, really hope more people get to experience this game.

Great game, a nice mix of platforming and rogue-like. I only have two complaints, firstly no map. There should be some kind of mapping to tell you the places you've been as I feel like I'm spending a lot of time just backtracking trough empty rooms trying to find that boss room I went by like 15 mins ago. Secondly it's the lack of info on skills and upgrades. Have you ever played a game in which you had values like crit chance or additional dmg per upgrade clearly written and you taught to yourself damn all these precise values that clearly tell me what advanteges I get by picking this skill over the other, this is no fun it would be so much better if I were completely oblivious as tho what each skill does ! No ? Well the devs of this game apparently have as every skill just says slight increase or increase to this or that. Some skills don't even say if they have certain caps or not. Honestly at some point you want to optimise you runs and chose upgrades that fin your play-style, well not having the info as to what each upgrade does exactly can be really frustrating. Why even show how much damage we do to mobs and such if details on upgrades are pretty much hidden from us ? At the very least this should be an option like show damage numbers so that casual 5 and 70 year old's can turn it off if its to complicated for them.

[b] Hey, wait a minute, this game is actually good? [/b] Thats a quote from my friend after he watched me play this game for a little. Its not surprising though because if you only play the game once, the first hour is absolute dookie. Your character is ridiculously slow, weak, squishy, and talentless. Only after an hour of playing will you have amassed the needed in game currency to upgrade your base stats (and they affect all classes). After this point, the game quickly begins picking up pace and by hour 2 you'll be glad you paid the meager asking price for this experience. Are there issues? Hell yeah there are. The game doesnt run all that smoothly, the maps can be confusing and a bit repetitive in their layouts, the combat feels a bit clunky, and the game is extremely unfriendly to beginners. But underneath the apparent jank, there is a really awesome experience. Notably, I really like the general movement and navigation. Its a 2.5D game so you side scroll and move vertically, but you also change you path in the third dimension at points as well. This is all tied together with a nice jetpack and ledge-grab system which allows for some nice exploration. I do wish the combat played into this flying system more for all the characters instead of just a few. It's got all of your usual rogue-like staples, so if you're into the genre I really do think this is a game that deserves at least an hour of your time to see what its got. If you dont like it, just return it. If you're not into the genre, I still do give it a recommendation. Just be aware that its got some niche appeal and the frustrating difficulty might be offputting at first.

It's got a lot of spirit, but has some issues in places. With the right approach, it's a pretty fun rogue-like, but at the moment, it's also easy to run into some annoying experiences. This review is probably overly thorough, so just read the last paragraph if you're not really stuck on whether to buy it or not. Moving through the 3 dimensional environment through connected 2 dimensional planes takes a bit of getting used to, can result in some unintuitive movement (usually involving jumping off ladders or ledges that transition between 2 perpendicular planes), and has painfully tight tolerances in some places. However, thorough exploration of the levels is often well rewarded. Also, a good understanding of how the movement works lets you traverse the levels faster and can even provide an advantage in combat situations from time to time. Speaking of the combat, it mostly boils down to two important inputs: your attack and dodge roll. While winding up an attack, you can still move, albeit at a slower speed, jump, and dodge. Dodging importantly cancels you out of the attack, which is vital for classes with slower attack speeds, and movement lets you control spacing or reverse your attack direction (proper timing of this can even let you hit targets on both sides). This system has a lot of potential, especially when you have a secondary and ultimate attack to consider as well, but unfortunately most other gameplay elements don't encourage this attention to detail. Any class or build with a high attack speed can safely ignore these details and most enemies you face don't provide a pressure to understand the mechanics (especially once your build can comfortably one-shot them). If you enjoy this sort of thing, I'd recommend sticking to the sapper, seismologist, and technophobe classes. Enemies also telegraph their attacks pretty well with both audio and visual cues which helps a ton to make things feel fair once you've encountered a specific enemy once or twice. It's worth noting that since your two methods of avoiding damage are dodging, which requires lots of horizontal space, and jumping, which limits you to a single air dodge until you land and is less reliable at avoiding attacks, most of the difficulty in any encounter comes from the environment you fight in rather than the enemies themselves. Fighting on narrow platforms or with hazards nearby greatly changes how you have to approach enemies. This becomes especially true as you progress through a run and enemies start leaving trails of fire and dropping explosives. In some senses, this is an upside since it can add a bit of variety and more closely ties the movement, exploration, and combat together. However, it also leads to some problems. The levels are composed of randomly generated modifications of a set of templates, so whether you encounter situations like that, which can honestly prove a greater challenge than some bosses depending on your build, is down to RNG. The encouragement of thorough exploration also means that runs can take a while in order to have the best chances at success and losing a run to an unfortunate hazard and enemy placement is not a fun setback. The class designs are all pretty unique both in terms of visuals and gameplay. Since the normal enemies are level-dependent variants on a set of basic types, there's not the same degree of visual variety, but those variations do make up for it in terms of gameplay. They are also all robots, so the designs don't stand out as much as the classes. As mentioned earlier, the environments are pretty nice to look at if a bit dark at times (I always turn my brightness up to max when launching this game). At its best, Fallback puts you in cool environments and rewards you for working creatively with the mechanics. At its worst, you're stuck trying to get the timing on a double jump just right or facing a bullet hell boss where your options are spam dodge rolls on the ground or trying going into the air where your options are more limited. It's certainly rough around the edges, but the game has changed quite a bit as its been developed, so there's hope there and you can still get quite a bit of enjoyment out of it in its current state for its price.

Fallback is a challenging Rogue-lite where timing and ennemy pattern learning is key. You'll get frustrated, but you will go back because you know you can make it to the end. And that's why it's a good Rogue-lite! The skill tree offers enough different playstyles and you will quickly find your own set of favorite upgrades. The 2.5D is gorgeous and the camera movement are really giving a nice visual dimension to the game. At only 9.99€ it's a steal! It's hard to find anything at this starting price with such quality. Go for it.