Anomaly Collapse

A pretty solid roguelite. Although the difficulty kinda drops substantially once you figure out how to play and win a few normal mode runs and advance in the meta-progression layer. The character designs are cute and the enemy designs are decently varied and interesting. There's a satisfying feeling watching the puzzle pieces of combat click together in real time. Even on hard mode, the game doesn't get more difficult per-se. It's just that the game dumps random fight modifiers on you so there's a billion field-wide displacements and little ticks of damage and things spawning constantly. I think I've only lost a handful of runs, and most of those were from tackling hard mode before i had a few more wins/unlocks under my belt (and didn't understand how to achieve "broken" runs). Like the other top review (at the time of writing) says, there is a lack of variety to some degree. But the gameplay is fun enough that I'd wager you at least get 15-20 hours out of it before fatigue starts to set in. At no point did I feel like "ugh my combination of characters is utterly unworkable", because most characters can pivot into alternative roles given the right items (hence the importance of unlocking more things in the meta-progression layer). Runs will go up to around 2 hours at the longest, but you can save (and quit) after every fight, so it's pretty flexible session-wise.

Anomaly Collapse is a really good game. The character designs are very charming and contrast well against the enemies, there's no "easy way" to win, and playing as certain characters unlocks more things for you to use with them even if you lose the run. Some characters are extremely difficult to unlock which could be considered a downside, and the game feels like a grind at points, as well as being pretty difficult to understand as a beginner, but the other aspects of the game more than make up for it.

I enjoyed this game a lot. Specifically, I found the game mechanics to be a bit odd, but they actually made more sense as the challenge grew near the end of a "campaign," and every other aspect of the game was fun and pretty engaging and challenging! Each of the characters seemed to possess unique bios, play styles, and visual designs (though they did not appear to have many unique lines of dialogue, oh well), and the music was pretty good. I believe that the most fun part of this game had to be the amount of challenge; I'm still blown away by how many variables can seemingly affect the challenge of the fights. Just, whatever you do, make sure you understand the conditions for success so that you don't accidentally get a premature game over for something really stupid. In summary, I really liked this game, and I will probably go back to it again some time. If you are looking for an interesting, fun new take on a deck-building strategy game that doesn't necessarily need a riveting story to propel it forward, then you should go ahead and give this game a try.