Jupiter Hell

Really fun blend of traditional roguelike with classic FPS, as much about tactics and long term plans as about ragdolling, exploding, and gibbing enemies. JG follows a straightforward structure for its main game mode. In early levels you try to defeat as many enemies as you can for experience and items, in midgame you complete the key parts of your skills and keep improving your stuff, and at the end you use everything you have for the final gauntlet to defeat the demon leader. Each of the stages has a main branch, where you can do an optional harder stage for more items, and side branches, with different enemies and rewards, along with a special mission. This is usually something you can go out of your way to do for the best rewards. After these, you get the stage's boss fight. In the short term, you try to gain advantage over enemies by using cover, being faster, exploiting their weaknesses to damage types, or using some special skill. Enemies are generally fragile and so are you, so you either win them quickly or there are too many of them and you need to use your contingency plan. It is possible to plan well ahead because an individual run is, to a rather large extent for this kind of game, predictable. Levels are generally consistent across runs in what kind of enemies they have, what kind of ranges their fights will happen at, and what kind of rewards you can expect at the end. The harder levels throw tough demons at you that cost a lot of ammo to go though and you need to be ready or avoid those levels. Many of the levels also have a fixed layout. I really like the levels in this game, they're really good at creating interesting situations even when procedurally generated (something DRL/JHC I feel wasn't as good as). All in all, the levels are consistent and you won't be unprepared or prepared for something that doesn't happen. Character progression works through skills and equipment/items. You gain skills from defeating enemies and gaining levels. Each of the character classes has their own skill options, each with 3 levels: basic ones, advanced ones unlocked by taking the required basic skills first, and master skills that may require advanced skills. Certain basic skills on one class are advanced skills of another. Most of them make big differences in your build: for example Grenadier, an advanced Technician skill that improves your grenades and gives you more when opening crates. As for equipment, there are rare and unique items, but most of them are not guaranteed and they are not required. You might find some unique that is exactly what you wanted or find two that you can't use and just rely on common equipment. There are enough chances in the game to find rare items, so you'll certainly go into the final battle having at least something special. A big problem for the new player is that it's hard to do it when much of the information is not actually explained ingame. There is a mod that replaces the ingame help menu with a reference sheet with most of the information, but it would be nice to have more things explained. For example, the item that teleports you away from enemies also makes them break their chase, making it a great countermeasure for the level event that makes all of them come for you directly. The fighting in this game is fun in that classic FPS sense, Weapons are generally not effective past the maximum vision range, so generally you have to fight and accept their counterattack if you fail to take them down before it's their turn. You can hear them by listening to the game and there are ways to detect where they are exactly before seeing them. It takes 1-3 attacks to take down a typical enemy and for a strong one to do the same to you. It looks really cool: great weapon sounds, the explosions look good, and most of all Mark Meer does great as the action movie hero, both in his cheesy and serious lines. The very small dev team did come with costs. The balance in this game is all over the shop. Some skills and branches are manifestly bad, the minor relics that are supposed to be equipped for minor bonuses are mostly bad (unless modded), by Kornel Kisielewicz' own admission Nightmare! mode respawning enemies wasn't a good thing to base the highest difficulty around (a problem not as bad in DRL, surprisingly), the game's framerate is set to the monitor's refresh rate and JH can't lower it, and there are some other inconveniences which are mostly fixed by the QoL mod. So Jupiter Hell is fun, it's just that after you enjoy it at a beginner level where you can just shoot demons you need mods and other outside resources to make up for some omissions.

Very cool and unique game. Think Doom x Supershot x Top down view. Lots of builds to try and you can play as fast or as slow as you want. Or to try as hard or as little as you want. Lots of challenges as well and difficulty levels. There's a lot to learn and the gameplay itself is also interesting. As some examples: My favorite builds are scout - assassinate x swashbuckler for melee teleportation - bonus damage for ranged then if you kill with ranged you get bonus melee damage Or gun kata, if you want to be in the matrix dodging and double wielding pistols and smg's For marine you can turn any slash damage into pierce - shotgun killzone everything goes poof Or technician and you can put everything on fire. The world will burn! or summon bots to help you. These are the most interesting for me, but there are plenty of other builds as well. Only thing i wish this game had was an option for more enemies on lower difficulties. Nothing beats the satisfaction of killing everything on screen with a well positioned shotgun blast. But usually the higher difficulty, the more enemies you get, but they also hit harder. I find the Hard difficulty a good middle ground. Anyway, very fun game, I am really enjoying my time with it. And it's easy to get back to and just chill if you need it.

Fun, creative top-down turn based shooter.