Boneraiser Minions

I discovered the game sitting in my library since early access, thanks to deadzoned. ever since I can't stop playing it. one of the best horde survivals out there for sure!

Easily my favorite game in the auto-shooter genre. In Boneraiser Minions, leveling doesn't just get you a weapon or an upgrade to a weapon like other auto-shooters. It makes you raise a minion, upgrade a minion, or combine your minions into more powerful minions. This means your character can't really kill things on their own (although you can find relics that give you attacks), and instead dodges around, using your army as an area-denial tactic. This makes the gameplay a lot more intense than the other auto-shooters, because you have to create a killzone and maneuver to keep it between yourself and your enemies. The possibilities as you level have a lot more going on than other games, too. For example, there are these little guys called Barrow Boners. These can be raised three at a time, and they're basically a resource. You can turn two of them into Barrow Diggers that dig up bones (or sometimes treasure chests), turn three of them into a giant with a punch attack, turn five of them into a level three skeleton, or sacrifice them one at a time with certain spells. On top of that, the giant you make out of these can be transformed into a more powerful giant. Also, giants of all types are made of two skeleton minions of any type. Also, there are these Mold units you can have that are made of a level three skeleton plus a level one skeleton, Demon units that you can only raise if you have a level three skeleton, and then the Demonic skeletons can be merged, and... I could go on, but the point is that you only get four choices of what to do per level, and there's all kinds of interplay between your options, so you have to seize opportunities as they come. If I could make just one improvement to the game, it would involve the resource system. If you're doing something like raising Barrow Boners, you can see how many you already have, but if you're doing something that SPENDS your Barrow Boners, you can't, which is a problem because you really need to know if you run out of Boners. The best part of the game so far is all the ways you can bring Hell down on your own head to level up more. Other auto-shooters have this, but not to nearly the same level of detail. For comparison: in Vampire Survivors, you can have more enemies at once (Charm), and you can get an effect that makes enemies tougher, faster, and more numerous (Curse). There are accessories that increase Charm and Curse, and that's it. In Boneraiser Minions, you get a whole metaprogression system that lets you buy new types of enemies that show up each level, effectively making the game harder for yourself. You also get structures that you can donate a metaprogression currency to each run to get waves of powerful enemies that are worth a lot of XP, spells that summon enemies of various types, relics that cause enemies that drop special resources to appear more often, spells that make bless enemies to make them more powerful but more valuable... It all points in the same direction but it's way more satisfying to play with, because it's so much more varied. And that really sums Boneraiser Minions up as a whole; you just have a lot more going on than other auto-shooters because there's a lot more than can happen, and yet, the whole game's well-balanced and comes together nicely. It's wonderful. HIGHLY recommended!

What drags down Boneraiser Minions, in a big way, is how poorly the game communicates information to the player. There are two layers to this. First, the game's aesthetics are 'clear as mud.' The developer added menu options where you can have enemies outlined in bright red and minions outlined in a soft blue, but it only mitigates how visually noisy and messy the game is. Every single time a run ended in this game, rather than feeling like "that was my fault," I felt the game had betrayed basic player trust in being able to interpret what was happening. Worse than the 'visual mud,' though, is the game's baffling inability to clarify its own mechanics. For example: you can't open a pause menu that shows you your current minions: which ones you have, their current stats and levels, their damage output, etc. You can't review what your currently equipped spell does. You can't 'pass' on a spell you accidentally pick up when you haven't yet expended the one you have equipped. How many minions am I even allowed to have? How many minions is it realistic for me to raise during a run anyway? What's the difference (trade-off) between having two level 1 minions or one level 2? Who knows? The game has this fleeting sense of fun but is always letting you down, and after a while you can't make excuses for it anymore and you feel that you've essentially seen what there is to see. Just buy Megabonk instead.